Creation of a synthesis-friendly inflammation-inducible promoter suitable for cell therapy.

The development of 'smart' cell-based therapeutics requires cells that first recognize conditions consistent with disease (e.g. inflammation) and then subsequently release therapeutic proteins, thereby reducing potential toxicity from otherwise continuous expression.

Generation of stable cell lines using readthrough expression from lentiviral integration.

Lentiviral infection is often used to integrate genetic material into cells to stably express transgenes of interest. Depending on the location of integration into the host genome, readthrough expression of the lentiviral cargo can occur via an upstream endogenous promoter, which is typically an unwanted phenomenon because it can result in dysfunctional expression. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate that readthrough expression can be a wanted phenomenon for expressing functional proteins while at the same time reducing the size of the lentiviral transfer plasmid.