This study describes the initial testing of a novel strategy for neutralization of lentiviruses using the fundamental biology of enveloped viruses' assembly and budding. In the field of gene therapy, viral vector surface proteins have been manipulated in order to redirect host cell specificity by alteration of pseudo-types. This study tested whether known viral pseudo-typing proteins or surface...

Recently, several systems designed to trigger RNA interference by using small hairpin RNA driven by polymerase III promoters have been described. Here, we report a lentiviral-mediated small interfering RNA delivery system that can be induced by CRE recombinase. The system consists of a lentiviral vector carrying a mouse U6 promoter that is separated from a small hairpin RNA by a random DNA stuf...

We describe the use of lentiviral vectors expressing small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) to knock down the expression of specific genes in vitro and in vivo. A lentiviral vector capable of generating siRNA specific for GFP after transduction of 293T-GFP cell lines showed no GFP fluorescence. Furthermore, no GFP-specific RNA could be detected. When eggs from GFP-positive transgenic mice were transdu...

Transduction of latent membrane protein 2 (LMP2)-specific T-cell receptors into activated T lymphocytes may provide a universal, MHC-restricted mean to treat EBV-associated tumors in adoptive immunotherapy. We compared TCR-specific promoters of distinct origin in lentiviral vectors, that is, Vβ6.7, delta, luria, and Vβ5.1 to evaluate TCR gene expression in human primary peripheral blood monocyt...

BACKGROUND Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disorder that shows as erythematous and scaly lesions. The pathogenesis of psoriasis is driven by a dysregulation of the immune system which leads to an altered cytokine production. Proinflammatory cytokines that are up-regulated in psoriasis include tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα), interleukin-12 (IL-12), and IL-23 for which monoclonal ant...

Transgenic animals can be broadly defined as animals that contain recombinant DNA molecules in their genome that have been introduced by human intervention (Wall, 1996). Developmental studies and clinically relevant disease models are based on transgenic laboratory animals, most commonly the mouse. In farm animals, transgenic technology is used to produce large quantities of pharmaceutically re...

Lentiviral expression vectors carrying human NRP-1 short hairpin RNA (shRNA) were constructed and selected to present highly efficient NRP-1/shRNA interference sequences, in order to investigate the effects of RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated NRP-1 silencing on the biological activities of breast cancer cells. Three pairs of human NRP-1 targeted specific interference sequences and one pair of n...