Fasting increases the in vivo gene delivery of AAV vectors

Successful gene therapy of many genetic diseases requires efficient delivery of the gene to several tissues of the organism. Adeno-associated virus (AAV) is, to date, the sole vehicle that allows to achieving this result but only at the condition of administering very large amounts of vectors. This, however, raises questions about the feasibility of the large-scale production and about the safety of the approach. One way to overcome both problems would be to develop strategies that increase the in vivo efficiency. Here, we investigated the effect of fasting on the transduction efficiency of AAV serotypes 2, 6, and 9. The transgene expression was followed for several weeks and vector biodistribution was determined by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) . The results show that fasting increases the transduction efficiency of all three serotypes. Altogether, we present here a simple and clinically acceptable approach that may allow to reducing the vector dose.