Baculovirus-transduced bone marrow mesenchymal

Baculovirus-transduced bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells for systemic cancer
therapy


Adult stem cells may serve as powerful cellular vehicles to deliver therapeutic
genes for cancer therapy. In such applications, effective and safe transduction to load stem cells with genes of interest is essential. To examine whether  baculovirus can be used to fulfill this task, we tested a range of baculoviral
vectors in human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). A
vector using the human cytomegalovirus immediate-early gene promoter to drive
transgene expression and the woodchuck hepatitis virus posttranscriptional
regulatory element to enhance translation was able to transduce MSCs
with efficiency close to 80%. Following the observation that baculoviral
transduction did not significantly affect surface marker expression of the stem
cells, we tested the feasibility of using baculovirus-transduced MSCs for
targeted cancer therapy. We transduced cells with a baculoviral vector harboring
the herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase gene, and performed tail vein
injection of the transduced cells into



Cancer Gene Therapy 17, 721-729 (October 2010) |
doi:10.1038/cgt.2010.32