Gene therapy for plastic and reconstructive surgery.

ABSTRACT

In the future, gene therapy will become the standard treatment for enhancing wound healing and nerve and muscle regeneration and for preventing or treating vessel thrombosis, areas critical to the plastic surgeon and the patient. This review has focused on factors that are either currently used in a clinical situation or have the promise of being developed for clinical use. The role of gene therapy applied to these areas will be to locally place therapeutic genes at the site of injury or surgical repair, which will replace the need to systemically administer therapeutic agents that may have toxic effects, and to express factors in low abundance but at effective and safe levels. This strategy is to produce enough agent to have a therapeutic effect. The use of tissue-specific promoters will be beneficial in localizing the production of agents to certain cell types. Gene therapeutic approaches used in plastic surgery may have a significant impact on the health care system by increasing efficiency of treatment and reducing health care costs. The accelerated pace of basic research in gene therapy will result in clinical applications in the near future.