Background: The genomic integration of a lentiviral vector developed for the treatment of Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS) was assessed by localizing the vector insertion sites (IS) in a murine model of gene therapy for the disease.
Methods: Transduced hematopoietic progenitor cells were transplanted into mice or cultured in vitro. The IS were determined in the genomic DNA from blood, the bone marrow of the animals and from cultured cells.
Gene therapy has been proposed as a potential treatment for Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS), a severe primary immune deficiency characterized by multiple hematopoietic-specific cellular defects. In order to develop an optimal lentiviral gene transfer cassette for this application, we compared the performance of several internal promoters in a variety of cell lineages from human WAS patients. Vectors using endogenous promoters derived from short (0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe only natural mechanism of malaria transmission in sub-Saharan Africa is the mosquito, generally Anopheles gambiae. Blocking malaria parasite transmission by stopping the development of Plasmodium in the insect vector would provide a useful alternative to the current methods of malaria control. Toward this end, it is important to understand the molecular basis of the malaria parasite refractory phenotype in An.
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