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J. Virol., 03 1997, 1842-1849, Vol 71, No. 3
S Hardy, M Kitamura, T Harris-Stansil, Y Dai and ML Phipps
Two barriers prevent adenovirus-based vectors from having wide application.
One is the difficulty of making new adenoviruses, and the second is the
strong immunological reaction to viral proteins. Here we describe uses of
Cre-lox recombination to overcome these problems. First, we demonstrate a
simple method for constructing E1-substituted adenoviruses. Second, we
demonstrate a method to construct adenovirus vectors carrying recombinant
genes in place of all of the viral genes, so-called gutless adenovirus
vectors. The pivotal feature in each method is the use of a negatively
selected adenovirus named psi5. We engineered a cis-acting selection into
psi5 by flanking its packaging site with loxP sites. When psi5 was grown in
cells making a high level of Cre recombinase, the packaging site was
deleted by recombination and the yield of psi5 was reduced to 5% of the
wild-type level. To make a new E1-substituted virus, we used psi5 as a
donor virus and recombined it with a shuttle vector via a loxP site. The
resulting recombinant virus has a single loxP site next to the packaging
site and therefore outgrows psi5 in the presence of Cre recombinase. To
make a gutless virus, we used psi5 as a helper virus. The only viral
sequences included in the gutless vector are those needed in cis for its
replication and packaging. We found that a loxP site next to the packaging
site of the gutless virus was necessary to neutralize homologous
recombination between psi5 and the gutless viruses within their packaging
domains.
Copyright © 1997, American Society for Microbiology
Construction of adenovirus vectors through Cre-lox recombination
Somatix Therapy Corporation, Alameda, California 94501-1034, USA. shardy@apple.somatix.com
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