Current Perspectives The Advent of Adenovirus Gene Therapy for Cardiovascular Disease

Although the era of gene therapy for human disease is relatively recent and brief to date, a succes-sion of distinct phases can be recognized al-ready by the rapidly expanding clinical horizons for correcting disease through the introduction of new genes.1,2 An initial period was focused on the strategy and expectation that hereditary disorders caused by the lack of a needed protein would be prevented by insert-ing normal copies of the gene into the germ line of affected patients or even unaffected heterozygotes who carried the mutation. In retrospect, although this as-sumption appeared logical enough at the time, daunting technical and ethical concerns soon were appreciated, such as the risks of inadvertent mutations caused by manipulation of germ line DNA, incomplete knowledg