An in vivo transfection system for inducible gene expression and gene silencing in murine hepatocytes

Hydrodynamic Delivery: Characteristics, Applications, and Technological Advances

The principle of hydrodynamic delivery was initially used to develop a method for the delivery of plasmids into mouse hepatocytes through tail vein injection and has been expanded for use in the delivery of various biologically active materials to cells in various organs in a variety of animal species through systemic or local injection, resulting in significant advances in new applications and technological development. The development of regional hydrodynamic delivery directly supports successful gene delivery in large animals, including humans. This review summarizes the fundamentals of hydrodynamic delivery and the progress that has been made in its application. Recent progress in this field offers tantalizing prospects for the development of a new generation of technologies for broader application of hydrodynamic delivery.

Constitutive and Inducible Systems for Genetic In Vivo Modification of Mouse Hepatocytes Using Hydrodynamic Tail Vein Injection

In research models of liver cancer, regeneration, inflammation, and fibrosis, flexible systems for in vivo gene expression and silencing are highly useful. Hydrodynamic tail vein injection of transposon-based constructs is an efficient method for genetic manipulation of hepatocytes in adult mice. In addition to constitutive transgene expression, this system can be used for more advanced applications, such as shRNA-mediated gene knock-down, implication of the CRISPR/Cas9 system to induce gene mutations, or inducible systems. Here, the combination of constitutive CreER expression together with inducible expression of a transgene or miR-shRNA of choice is presented as an example of this technique. We cover the multi-step procedure starting from the preparation of sleeping beauty-transposon constructs, to the injection and treatment of mice, and the preparation of liver tissue for analysis by immunostaining. The system presented is a reliable and efficient approach to achieve complex genetic manipulations in hepatocytes. It is specifically useful in combination with Cre/loxP-based mouse strains and can be applied to a variety of models in the research of liver disease.