Generation of Novel, High Titre, Multi-Cistronic Retroviral Vectors Which Simultaneously Express Individual Proteins in Different Subcellular Locations of Hematopoietic Cells.

As gene therapy strategies become ever more sophisticated, there is a need for vectors which efficiently deliver and express more than one gene product to target cells e.g. to enable in vivo selection; to correct multiple genetic loci; to provide a suicide mechanism for safety purposes. Employing alternate codon usage, we have synthesised a novel version of the FMDV 2A self-processing moiety which encodes the same primary amino-acid sequence as the wild type protein (and which possesses equivalent cleavage activity to the wild type protein). By including this synthetic FMDV 2A sequence in retroviral vectors which also contain the wild type sequence, we are able to facilitate the efficient co-translational separation of 3 different proteins encoded by a single transcript. This vector configuration also permits the inclusion of an IRES sequence and thus expression of a fourth protein. Using this technology we have created two tetracistronic retroviral vectors which express eGFP; O⁶-methylguanine DNA-methyltransferase and truncated human nerve growth factor receptor courtesy of 2A mediated cleavage, and a mitochondrially targeted dsRED via an IRES. Stable amphotropic producer lines containing these vectors generated supernatant which contained a high titre of retroviral particles (>10⁶ IU/ml) which was sufficient for the transduction of K562 human erythroleukemic cells. Analysis of transduced cells confirmed that all four proteins were expressed individually and segragated to their correct subcellular locations. Furthermore, limiting dilution assay revealed that proteins expressed courtesy of the 2A sequences were still generated at high levels, even when cells were infected with a low MOI of virus. We propose that this technology will allow the creation of more sophisticated vectors for use in gene therapy of hematopoietic and other cells.