Magnetofection: Using magnetic particles and magnetic force to enhance and target nucleic acid delivery

During the last decade, nanomagnetic methods for delivering and targeting nucleic acids were developed. These methods are often referred to as magnetofection. We have defined magnetofection as nucleic acid delivery under the influence of a magnetic field acting on nucleic acid vectors that are associated with magnetic (nano)particles [1-3] and coined the acronym magnetofection [4], which since then has been widely used as a generic term for magnetically targeted or localized and enhanced nucleic acid delivery in the scientific literature. During the last decade, several research groups implemented and optimized the concept of magnetic drug targeting in nucleic acid delivery [5-15]. Since the early days of magnetofection, significant progress has been made showing that the major benefits of magnetofection are an improvement of the dose-response relationship in nucleic acid delivery, a strong improvement of the kinetics of the delivery process, and the possibility to localize nucleic acid delivery to an area that is under the influence of a gradient magnetic field [3].