Gene Therapy in Cardiac Surgery

Human gene therapy continues to be an exciting concept for the treatment of disease. This field of research remains in its early stages, but already a number of studies have provided “proof-of-principle”.The promise of gene therapy in the filed of cardiothoracic surgery remains high for several applications, such as therapeutic angiogenesis, vascular prosthesis heart valve-engineering, vein graft thickening and transplantation, methods of gene to the target tissue delivery already exists. The introduction of gene transfer, genetic engineering, and genomic principles and technologies may one day enhanced the tissue compatibility, durability, and performance of surgical therapy to cardiothoracic and vascular diseases. Furthermore, surgical implants may potentially be used as sources for local or targeted therapeutic gene products.This synergestic evolution of surgical and molecular science, however, will require the close elaboration of experts from a wide variety of biologic and medical sciences and will help transform the practice of both medicine and surgery in the 21st century..