High-yield retroviral production using a temperature-modulated two-stage operation

High-efficiency lentiviral transduction of primary human CD34⁺ hematopoietic cells with low-dose viral inocula

Lentivirus-based vectors have the potential to transduce non-dividing primary stem cells. However, primary cells tend to be less susceptible to manipulation and require a high concentration of virus inoculum. Furthermore, increasing the concentration of the lentivirus inoculum may raise safety risks. Therefore, to develop a technique that allows high transduction efficiency at low multiplicities of infection (MOIs), we optimized a lentivirus-based system for cell lines and primary cells by determining the best condition using various parameters. When progenitor cell assays were conducted using human CD34(+) bone marrow and mononuclear cells, the transduction condition yielded a great number of eGFP(+) colonies with lower-dose viral inocula compared to that of current lentivirus-based transduction technologies. In conclusion, this system is anticipated to produce stable expression of a gene introduced into primary cells for preclinical studies with lower safety risks.

Moloney murine leukemia virus decay mediated by retroviral reverse transcriptase degradation of genomic RNA

Retroviral vectors are powerful tools for the introduction of transgenes into mammalian cells and for long-term gene expression. However, their application is often limited by a rapid loss of bioactivity: retroviruses spontaneously loose activity at 37 degrees C, with a half-life of 4 to 9 h depending on the retrovirus type. We sought to determine which components of the retrovirus are responsible for this loss in bioactivity and to obtain a quantitative characterization of their stability. To this end, we focused on RNA and viral proteins, two major components that we hypothesized may undergo degradation and negatively influence viral infectivity. Reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) targeting RNA encoding portions of the viral genome clearly demonstrated time-dependent degradation of RNA which correlated with the loss in viral bioactivity. Circular dichroism spectroscopy, SDS-PAGE and two-dimensional SDS-PAGE analyses of viral proteins did not show any change in secondary structure or evidence of proteolysis. The mechanism underlying the degradation of viral RNA was investigated by site-directed mutagenesis of proteins encoded by the viral genome. Reverse transcriptase and protease mutants exhibited enhanced RNA stability in comparison to wild type recombinant virus, suggesting that the degradation of RNA, and the corresponding virus loss of activity, is mediated by the reverse transcriptase enzyme.