High efficiencies of gene transfer with immobilized recombinant retrovirus: kinetics and optimization

We used a combination of mathematical modeling and experiments to investigate the rate-limiting steps of retroviral transduction on surface-bound fibronectin (FN) and identify the conditions that maximize the efficiency of gene transfer. Our results show that fibronectin-assisted gene transfer (FAGT) is a strong function of the time and temperature of virus incubation in FN-coated plates. Gene transfer increases sharply at short times, reaches a maximum at intermediate times, and eventually declines as a result of loss of retroviral activity. The maximum transduction efficiency and the time at which this is attained increase with decreasing temperature of virus incubation. Depending on the temperature and the type of target cells, the initial rate of gene transfer increases by 3- to 10-fold and the maximum transduction efficiency increases by 2- to 4-fold as compared to traditional transduction (TT). Interestingly, Polybrene (PB) inhibits FAGT in a dose-dependent manner by inhibiting binding of retrovirus to FN. In contrast to traditional transduction, FAGT yields higher than 10-fold transduction efficiencies with concentrated retrovirus stocks. Gene transfer is directly proportional to the concentration of the virus-containing medium with no sign of saturation for the range of concentrations tested. These results suggest that immobilization of recombinant retrovirus can be rationally optimized to yield high efficiency of gene transfer to primary cells and improve the prospect of gene therapy for the treatment of human disease.