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Development of murine leukemia virus-based retroviral vectors with a minimum possibility of cis-activation

Gene Therapy volume 18, pages 240–249 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

The possibility of insertional mutagenesis in retroviral gene therapy can be reduced by using a vector lacking the enhancer sequence present in the U3 of the long-terminal repeats. However, such vectors suffer from many pitfalls. We attempted to improve a murine leukemia virus-based retroviral vector containing the enhancer-free U3, first by making it easier to construct a producer line and then by introducing the cellular RPL10 promoter as an internal promoter. The reverse orientation of the expression cassette of the transgene was found to give higher transducing titer and higher-level gene expression. The deletion analysis revealed that the 54-bp-long sequence of U3 (34 and 20 bp present at 5′ and 3′ extreme ends, respectively) was sufficient for the functions of retroviral vectors. The data from the in vitro cell culture assay indicated that the final construct, ROK, containing all these features, had little cis-activation activity, even if it was placed right upstream from the RNA start site of the neighboring gene. Our data suggested that the newly developed vector might provide increased safety, while still producing high viral titer from a stable producer line and high-level gene expression in various target cells including human CD34+ stem cells.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Kyungmi Koh, Jonghyun Choi, Hwajin Kong, Hyelim Cho and Hae-Sook Ahn for their assistance in cloning various cellular promoters and mutant forms of 3′LTR. This work was supported in part by the grant given to S Kim's university laboratory by Brain Research Center of the 21st Century Frontier Research Program funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (#2010K000829), in which ViroMed Co., Ltd. is a participating company.

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  1. K Lee

    Present address: 5Current address: Department of Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, 513 Parnassus Avenue, Box 0540, San Francisco, CA 94143-0540, USA.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

    J Jang, J-T Lee & S Kim

  2. School of Biological Sciences, Laboratory of Virology, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

    K Lee, S Kim & S Kim

  3. ViroMed Co.Ltd, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, Korea

    J Y Kim & S Kim

  4. School of Life Science and Biotechnology, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea

    K Yoon

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Sunyoung Kim, Sujeong Kim and Ja Young Kim are employees of ViroMed Co., Ltd.

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Jang, J., Lee, JT., Lee, K. et al. Development of murine leukemia virus-based retroviral vectors with a minimum possibility of cis-activation. Gene Ther 18, 240–249 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/gt.2010.135

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