Non-replicating viral vector-based AIDS vaccines: interplay between viral vectors and the immune system.

During the past 20 years, the development of HIV vaccines has come a long way. The focus has progressively changed from the traditional protein-based HIV vaccines that induce humoral immunity to the live recombinant viral vector-based HIV vaccines capable of eliciting both cellular and humoral immune responses. These new viral vector-based vaccines encoding multiple HIV antigens, delivered either alone or in heterologous prime-boost modalities elicited antigen-specific CTL responses in immunized hosts and protected animals from disease.

Feline immunodeficiency virus vectors. Gene transfer to mouse retina following intravitreal injection.

Background: Transduction of the murine retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE) with adenovirus vectors requires technically difficult and invasive subretinal injections. This study tested the hypothesis that recombinant vectors based on feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) could access the retina following intravitreal injection.

Methods: FIV vectors expressing E.

Functional correction of established central nervous system deficits in an animal model of lysosomal storage disease with feline immunodeficiency virus-based vectors.

Gene transfer vectors based on lentiviruses can transduce terminally differentiated cells in the brain; however, their ability to reverse established behavioral deficits in animal models of neurodegeneration has not previously been tested. When recombinant feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV)-based vectors expressing beta-glucuronidase were unilaterally injected into the striatum of adult beta-glucuronidase deficient [mucopolysaccharidosis type VII (MPS VII)] mice, an animal model of lysosomal storage disease, there was bihemispheric correction of the characteristic cellular pathology. Moreover, after the injection of FIV-based vectors expressing beta-glucuronidase into brains of beta-glucuronidase-deficient mice with established impairments in spatial learning and memory, there was dramatic recovery of behavioral function.

Viral-mediated gene transfer to mouse primary neural progenitor cells.

Neural progenitor cells may provide for cell replacement or gene delivery vehicles in neurodegen-erative disease therapies. The expression of therapeutic proteins by neural progenitors would be enhanced by viral-mediated gene transfer, but the effects of several common recombinant viruses on primary progenitor cell populations have not been tested. To address this issue, we cultured cells from embryonic day 16-18 mouse brain in serum-free medium containing epidermal growth factor or basic fibroblast growth factor, and investigated how transduction with recombinant viral vectors affected maintenance and differentiation properties of progenitor cells.