Submitted October 31, 2003
Accepted May 12, 2004
Targeted retroviral transduction of kit+ hematopoietic cells using novel ligand-display technology
Anil Chandrashekran, Myrtle Y Gordon, and Colin Casimir*
Faculty of Medicine, Department of Haematology, Imperial College London, Hammersmith Hospital Campus, London, United Kingdom
* Corresponding author; email: c.casimir{at}imperial.ac.uk.
Gene therapy for a wide variety of disorders would be greatly enhanced by the development of vectors that could be targeted for gene delivery to specific populations of cells. We describe here high efficiency targeted transduction based on a novel targeting strategy that exploits the ability of retroviruses to incorporate host cell proteins into the surface of the viral particle as they bud through the plasma membrane. Ecotropic retroviral particles produced in cells engineered to express the membrane-bound form of stem cell factor (mbSCF) transduce both human cell lines and primary cells with high efficiency in a strictly c-kit (SCF-receptor) dependent fashion. The availability of efficient targeted vectors provides a platform for the development of a new generation of therapies employing in vivo gene delivery.
