1. ¹Hematopoiesis and Gene Therapy Division, CIEMAT/CIBER-ER and Marcelino Botín Foundation, Madrid, Spain
2. ²Foundation for Applied Medical Research, Division of Cancer and Area of Cell Therapy, Clínica Universitaria, Universidad de Navarra, Navarra, Spain

Correspondence: Juan A. Bueren, Hematopoiesis and Gene Therapy Division, CIEMAT, Avenida Complutense no. 22, 28040 Madrid, Spain. E-mail: juan.bueren@ciemat.es

Received July 2006; Accepted April 2007; Published online 29 May 2007.

Abstract

Recent published data have shown the efficacy of gene therapy treatments of certain monogenic diseases. Risks of insertional oncogenesis, however, indicate the necessity of developing new vectors with weaker or cell-restricted promoters to minimize the trans-activation activity of integrated proviruses. We have inserted the proximal promoter of the vav proto-oncogene into self-inactivating lentiviral vectors (vav-LVs) and investigated the expression pattern and therapeutic efficacy of these vectors. Compared with other LVs frequently used in gene therapy, vav-LVs mediated a weak, though homogeneous and stable, expression in in vitro–cultured cells. Transplantation experiments using transduced mouse bone marrow and human CD34⁺ cells confirmed the stable activity of the promoter in vivo. To investigate whether the weak activity of this promoter was compatible with a therapeutic effect, a LV expressing the Fanconi anemia A (FANCA) gene was constructed (vav-FANCA LV). Although this vector induced a low expression of FANCA, compared to the expression induced by a LV harboring the spleen focus-forming virus (SFFV) promoter, the two vectors corrected the phenotype of cells from a patient with FA-A with the same efficacy. We propose that self-inactivating vectors harboring weak promoters, such as the vav promoter, will improve the safety of gene therapy and will be of particular interest for the treatment of diseases where a high expression of the transgene is not required.