Peptide-mediated DNA condensation for non-viral gene therapy

The construction of non-viral, virus-like vehicles for gene therapy involves the functionalization of multipartite constructs with nucleic acid-binding, cationic agents. Short basic peptides, alone or as fusion proteins, are appropriate DNA binding and condensing elements, whose incorporation into gene delivery vehicles results in the formation of protein–DNA complexes of appropriate size for cell internalization and intracellular trafficking. We review here the most used cationic peptides for artificial virus construction as well as the recently implemented strategies to control the architecture and biological activities of the resulting nanosized particles.