HIV-1 vectors for gene therapy

Gene therapy has recently attracted attention as a novel therapeutic strategy and several methods for transferring genes into target cells have been developed, Currently, retroviral vectors provide the most reliable and effective means of gene transfer in clinical gene therapy trials. These vectors are mainly based upon murine leukemia virus (MuLV), which can infect a variety of different replicating cell types. However, transduction of non-cycling target cells, such as hematopoietic stem cells, remains the ultimate goal of many gene therapy strategies. To address this problem, we have focused our efforts on the development of a lentiviral vector based upon the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). In this context, the ability of HIV-1 to infect non-dividing cells may render HIV-1-based vectors more useful than conventional MuLV-based vectors