The Old and the New: Prospects for Non-Integrating Lentiviral Vector Technology
Department of Infectious Diseases, School of Immunology and Microbial Sciences, King’s College London, London SE1 9RT, UK
Viruses 2020, 12(10), 1103; https://doi.org/10.3390/v12101103
Received: 31 August 2020 / Revised: 27 September 2020 / Accepted: 28 September 2020 / Published: 29 September 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Lentiviral Vectors)
Lentiviral vectors have been developed and used in multiple gene and cell therapy applications. One of their main advantages over other vectors is the ability to integrate the genetic material into the genome of the host. However, this can also be a disadvantage as it may lead to insertional mutagenesis. To address this, non-integrating lentiviral vectors (NILVs) were developed. To generate NILVs, it is possible to introduce mutations in the viral enzyme integrase and/or mutations on the viral DNA recognised by integrase (the attachment sites). NILVs are able to stably express transgenes from episomal DNA in non-dividing cells or transiently if the target cells divide. It has been shown that these vectors are able to transduce multiple cell types and tissues. These characteristics make NILVs ideal vectors to use in vaccination and immunotherapies, among other applications. They also open future prospects for NILVs as tools for the delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 components, a recent revolutionary technology now widely used for gene editing and repair.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
lentiviral vectors; non-integrating lentiviral vectors (NILVs); insertional mutagenesis; transgene expression; immunotherapy; CRISPR/Cas9
▼
Show Figures
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Apolonia, L. The Old and the New: Prospects for Non-Integrating Lentiviral Vector Technology. Viruses 2020, 12, 1103.
AMA Style
Apolonia L. The Old and the New: Prospects for Non-Integrating Lentiviral Vector Technology. Viruses. 2020; 12(10):1103.
Chicago/Turabian StyleApolonia, Luis. 2020. "The Old and the New: Prospects for Non-Integrating Lentiviral Vector Technology" Viruses 12, no. 10: 1103.
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
Search more from Scilit