Recombinant expression of coagulation factor VIII in hepatic and non-hepatic cell lines stably transduced with third generation lentiviral vectors comprising the minimal factor VIII promoter.

BACKGROUND: Lentiviral vectors have the capacity to transduce stably non-dividing, differentiated and undifferentiated cells of various tissues, including liver. To obtain high-level expression of transgenes, vectors often rely on viral promoters. However, recent data suggest that the supraphysiologic expression from ubiquitous viral promoters may not be beneficial and harbor the risk of oncogene activation. Therefore this study explored the lentiviral-mediated expression of human coagulation factor VIII (FVIII) driven by the physiologic FVIII gene promoter (FVIII-p), the liver-specific human alpha-1-antitrypsin gene promoter (hAAT-p), the ubiquitous but non-viral EF1alpha promoter (EF1alpha-p) and the viral CMV promoter. METHODS: Hepatic and non-hepatic cell lines were stably transduced with lentiviral vectors encoding FVIIIdelB and EGFP. To compare the different promoters, lentiviral vectors were cloned to drive FVIII expression from FVIII-p, EF1alpha-p, hAAT-p and CMV-p. RESULTS: As expected, the strong viral CMV-p and the ubiquitous EF1alpha-p resulted in the highest FVIII expression in all cell lines tested (CMV-p 1.85 IU/mL/10(6) cells for 293T, 3.15 for HepG2, 5.03 for SK-Hep, 0.91 for Hepa1-6; EF1-alpha promoter 0.30 IU/mL/10(6) cells for 293T, 0.04 for HepG2, 2.75 for SK-Hep, 0.46 for Hepa1-6). While the hAAT-p resulted in low FVIII levels (0.10 IU/mL/10(6)cells in HepG2 and 0.04 in Hepa1-6), the FVIII promoter gave reasonable expression levels in hepatic cells (0.47 IU/mL/10(6)cells in Hepa1-6 and 0.44 in SK-Hep). DISCUSSION: These results indicate the potential usefulness of the FVIII-p for hemophilia A gene therapy.

Frequency of the delta ccr5 deletion allele in the urban Brazilian population.

Studies on screening genes conferring resistance to HIV-1 and AIDS onset have shown a direct relationship between a 32 base pair (bp) deletion in the CCR5 beta-chemokine receptor gene (delta ccr5 mutant allele) and long survival of HIV-1 infected individuals bearing this mutation. These findings led to an interest in studies of delta ccr5 allele distribution in human populations. In the present study, polymerase chain reactions (PCR) in genomic DNA samples, using specific CCR5 oligonucleotide primers surrounding the breakpoint deletion, detected a 193-bp product from the normal CCR5 allele and a 161-bp product from the 32-bp deletion allele. In an investigation of the urban Brazilian population we detected a 93% frequency of normal CCR5/CCR5 homozygous individuals and a 7% frequency of CCR5/delta ccr5 heterozygous individuals. The frequency of the delta ccr5 mutant allele in this population is 0.035; however, no homozygous delta ccr5 individual has been detected thus far. This is the first evidence for the contribution of the delta ccr5 allele to the genetic background of the urban Brazilian population, which is characterized by intense ethnic admixture. These findings open perspectives for further studies on the relationship between delta ccr5 allele frequency and AIDS onset in high-risk HIV-1 exposures individuals.