Calixarenes and related macrocycles as gene delivery vehicles

The success of gene therapy depends largely on the development of new efficient gene delivery vehicles. The emerging class of molecules for this application is macrocycles that feature persistent shape, thus ensuring higher level of supramolecular organization of the DNA complexes. The review focuses on recently developed calixarenes and close analogues as gene delivery vectors, their chemistry, ability to compact nucleic acids, transfection ability in vitro and cytotoxicity. Their fixed conformation with the possibility of multiple functional groups at the upper and lower rims allows preparation of cone-shaped macromolecules capable of programmed hierarchical assembly in the presence of DNA. It is shown that specially designed calixarenes, particularly those having amphiphilic structure with clustered DNA binding units, can form small virus-sized DNA nanoparticles with well-defined architecture, high transfection efficiency and low toxicity. The field is still largely underexplored so that there is a lot of room for further improvement of the molecular design of calixarenes. Moreover, their evaluation in vivo on animals will be an important step towards their validation for gene therapy.