Intrathecal Vector Delivery in Juvenile Rats via Lumbar Cistern Injection

Gene therapy is a powerful technology to deliver new genes to a patient for the treatment of disease, be it to introduce a functional gene, inactivate a toxic gene, or provide a gene whose product can modulate the biology of the disease. The delivery method for the therapeutic vector can take many forms, ranging from intravenous infusion for systemic delivery to direct injection into the target tissue. For neurodegenerative disorders, it is often desirable to skew transduction towards the brain and/or spinal cord. The least invasive approach to target the entire central nervous system involves injection into the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), allowing the therapeutic to reach a large fraction of the central nervous system. The safest approach to deliver a vector into the CSF is the lumbar intrathecal injection, where a needle is introduced into the lumbar cistern of the spinal cord. This technique, also known as a lumbar puncture, has been widely used in neonatal and adult rodents and in large animal models. While the technique is similar across species and developmental stages, subtle differences in size, structure, and elasticity of tissues surrounding the intrathecal space require accommodations in the approach. This article describes a method for performing lumbar puncture in juvenile rats to deliver an adeno-associated serotype 9 vector. Here, 25-35 µL of vector were injected into the lumbar cistern, and a green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter was used to evaluate the transduction profile resulting from each injection. The benefits and challenges of this approach are discussed.