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Modeling the early steps of cytoplasmic trafficking in viral infection and gene delivery

Gene delivery of nucleic acid to the cell nucleus is a fundamental step in gene therapy. In this review of modeling drug and gene delivery, we focus on the particular stage of plasmid DNA or virus cytoplasmic trafficking. A challenging problem is to quantify the success of this limiting stage. We present some models and simulations of plasmid trafficking and of the limiting phase of DNA-polycation escape from an endosome and discuss virus cytoplasmic trafficking. The models can be used to assess the success of viral escape from endosomes, to quantify the early step of viral-cell infection, and to propose new simulation tools for designing new hybrid-viruses as synthetic vectors.