Gene therapy: efforts at developing large animal models for autologous bone marrow transplant and gene transfer with retroviral vectors

Two new large animal models, non-human primates and fetal sheep, have been developed in an effort to determine the feasibility of using retroviruses for gene therapy. The retroviral vectors N2 and SAX have been used to introduce the genes for neomycin phosphotransferase (neoR, conferring resistance to the antibiotic G418) and human adenosine deaminase (ADA; EC 3.5.4.17), respectively. Varying levels of human ADA activity have been detected in six of the eight SAX-treated monkeys analysed. In the monkey with the greatest activity, human ADA levels approximately 0.5% of endogenous monkey ADA levels were detected. By in situ hybridization, roughly one in 100 bone marrow cells were found to express vector DNA. Sheep have been used for studies of the infectability of fetal blood progenitors in vivo. Blood cells were treated with the N2 vector at the 96th day of gestation, and marrow cells were assayed for the presence of G418-resistant haematopoietic progenitors, starting from one week after birth (62 days after treatment). Up to 33% of colony-forming progenitors were drug resistant initially and, although the proportion of resistant colony-forming units declined, a level of 10% has been found 153 days after transplantation. Human bone marrow has also been treated with the N2 vector, resulting in 1-2% G418-resistant progenitors.