Effects of retroviral vector design on expression of human adenosine deaminase in murine bone marrow transplant recipients engrafted with genetically modified cells

Abstract

To determine which features of retroviral vector design most critically affect gene expression in hematopoietic cells in vivo, we have constructed a variety of different retroviral vectors which encode the same gene product, human adenosine deaminase (EC 3.5.4.4), and possess the same vector backbone yet differ specifically in transcriptional control sequences suggested by others to be important for gene expression in vivo. Murine bone marrow cells were transduced by each of the recombinant viruses and subsequently used to reconstitute the hematopoietic system of lethally irradiated recipients. Five to seven months after transplantation, analysis of the peripheral blood of animals transplanted with cells transduced by vectors which employ viral long terminal repeats (LTRs) for gene expression indicated that in 83% (77/93) of these animals, the level of human enzyme was equal to or greater than the level of endogenous murine enzyme. Even in bone marrow transplant recipients reconstituted for over 1 year, significant levels of gene expression were observed for each of the vectors in their bone marrow, spleen, macrophages, and B and T lymphocytes. However, derivatives of the parental MFG-ADA vector which possess either a single base mutation (termed B2 mutation) or myeloproliferative sarcoma virus LTRs rather than the Moloney murine leukemia virus LTRs led to significantly improved gene expression in all lineages. These studies indicate that retroviral vectors which employ viral LTRs for the expression of inserted sequences make it possible to obtain high levels of a desired gene product in most hematopoietic cell lineages for close to the lifetime of bone marrow transplant recipients.