Angiogenesis is a prerequisite for tumor progression and metastasis. Alphastatin, as an endogenous angiogenesis inhibitor, was recently used as an anticancer agent in several tumor models. We constructed recombinant self-inactivating lentivirus vectors expressing alphastatin and evaluated their ability to transfer genes into human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) as well as their antia...

Background Beta thalassemiais a genetic blood abnormality identified through mutations, which reduce the synthesis of the ß-globin chain. Gene therapy through Lentiviral vectors have cured many of genetic disorders. The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of lentiviral vectors in treatment of ß-thalassemia a...

In recent years, lentiviral expression systems have gained an unmatched reputation among the gene therapy community for their ability to deliver therapeutic transgenes into a wide variety of difficult-to-transfect/transduce target tissues (brain, hematopoietic system, liver, lung, retina) without eliciting significant humoral immune responses. We have cloned a construction kit-like self-inactiv...

Standard integration-proficient lentiviral vectors (IPLVs) are effective at much lower doses than other vector systems and have shown promise in several gene therapy approaches. Their main drawback is the potential risk of insertional mutagenesis. Novel biosafety-enhanced integration-deficient lentiviral vectors (IDLVs) offer a significant improvement and comparable transduction efficacy to the...

Modulation of the balance between pro- and antiangiogenic factors holds great promise for the treatment of a broad spectrum of human disease ranging from ischemic heart disease to cancer. This requires both the identification of angiogenic regulators and their efficient delivery to target organs. Here, we demonstrate the use of a noncatalytic fragment of matrix metalloproteinase 2 (termed PEX) ...

The aim of this study was to develop an efficient method for packaging and concentrating lentiviral vectors that consistently yields high-titer virus on a scale suitable for in vivo applications. Transient cotransfection of 293T packaging cells with DNA plasmids encoding lentiviral vector components was optimized using SuperFect, an activated dendrimer-based transfection reagent. The use of Sup...

The present study aimed to explore microRNA-126 (miR-126) as a novel therapeutic target for primary hypertension. The lentiviral vector containing human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV‑1), the miR‑126 gene knockdown viral vector (lenti-miR-126-KD), and control lentiviral vector (lenti‑scramble‑miR) were constructed. Spontaneously hypertensive rats were randomly divided into 4 groups, which receiv...

BACKGROUND Lentiviral vectors are efficient vehicles for stable gene transfer in dividing and non-dividing cells. Several improvements in vector design to increase biosafety and transgene expression, have led to the approval of these vectors for use in clinical studies. Methods are required to analyze the quality of lentiviral vector production, the efficiency of gene transfer and the extent of...

Lentiviral vectors (LVs) are a powerful tool for gene and cell therapy human embryonic kidney cells (HEK293) have been extensively used as platform production of these vectors. Like most cellular tissues, HEK293 release extracellular vesicles (EVs). EVs released by share similar size, biophysical characteristics even biogenesis pathway with cell-produced enveloped viruses, making it challenge t...