The present study evaluates the potential of third-generation lentivirus vectors with respect to their use as in vivo-administered T cell vaccines. We demonstrate that lentivector injection into the footpad of mice transduces DCs that appear in the draining lymph node and in the spleen. In addition, a lentivector vaccine bearing a T cell antigen induced very strong systemic antigen-specific cyt...

HIV-1–derived lentivectors are promising for gene transfer into hematopoietic stem cells but require preclinical in vivo evaluation relevant to specific human diseases. Nonobese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficient (NOD/SCID) mice accept human hematopoietic stem cell grafts, providing a unique opportunity for in vivo evaluation of therapies targeting human hematopoietic diseases. We demonst...

HIV disease became a manageable chronic disease since combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) was introduced as the standard treatment regimen. However, the emergence of drug-resistant viruses is a major problem associated with cART. A phenotypic drug susceptibility test using a lentiviral vector was established and applied to evaluate new protease inhibitors (PIs). Lentiviral vectors represe...

Hydrogels are an especially appealing class of biomaterials for gene delivery vehicles as they can be introduced into the body with minimally invasive procedures and are often applied in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine strategies. In this study, we show for the first time the use of an injectable alginate hydrogel for controlled delivery of lentivectors in the skeletal muscle of mu...

Lentivectors stimulate potent immune responses to antigen transgenes and are being developed as novel genetic vaccines. To improve safety while retaining efficacy, we constructed a lentivector in which transgene expression was restricted to antigen-presenting cells using the mouse dectin-2 gene promoter. This lentivector expressed a green fluorescent protein (GFP) transgene in mouse bone marrow...

HIV-1-derived lentivectors are promising for gene transfer into hematopoietic stem cells but require preclinical in vivo evaluation relevant to specific human diseases. Nonobese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficient (NOD/SCID) mice accept human hematopoietic stem cell grafts, providing a unique opportunity for in vivo evaluation of therapies targeting human hematopoietic diseases. We demonst...

HIV-1 derived lentivectors are promising for gene transfer into hematopoietic stem cells, but require pre-clinical in vivo evaluation relevant to specific human diseases. Non-obese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficient (NOD/SCID) mice accept human hematopoietic stem cell grafts providing a unique opportunity for in vivo evaluation of therapies targeting human hematopoietic diseases. We demon...

Immunization with recombinant lentivector elicits higher frequencies of tumor antigen-specific memory CD8+ T cells than peptide-based vaccines. This finding correlates with our observation that, upon recombinant lentivector immunization, a higher fraction of antigen-specific effector CD8+ T cells does not down-regulate the expression of the survival/memory marker interleukin-7 receptor alpha ch...

Viral vectors injected into the mouse brain offer the possibility for localized genetic modifications in a highly controlled manner. Lentivector injection into mouse neocortex transduces cells within a diameter of approximately 200mum, which closely matches the lateral scale of a column in barrel cortex. The depth and volume of the injection determines which cortical layer is transduced. Furthe...

introduction: hepatitis c virus (hcv) is one of the major medical problems. human and chimpanzees are the only specific hosts which are naturally susceptible to hcv infection. mice and other common laboratory animals are resistant to the virus, hence hcv prophylactic and therapeutic researches are very difficult and challenging. hcv non-structural protein 3 (ns3) is one of the most attractive t...