Alphavirus Vector Development Service
Alphavirus vectors offer an attractive strategy for the development of gene therapies due to their wide range of mammalian host cell transduction and fast and simple production of recombinant viral particles. Our company is committed to helping customers develop various types of alphavirus vectors with reduced cytotoxicity and enhanced gene expression capacity to enable effective gene delivery and improve the efficacy and duration of gene therapies for rare diseases.
Background
Viral vectors have shown great promise in various areas of gene therapy and have led to major breakthroughs in the development of therapies for rare diseases such as severe combined immune deficiency (SCID-X) and hemophilia. Currently, adeno-associated virus (AAV), adenovirus, and lentiviral vectors are frequently used. However, the less commonly used alphavirus vectors offer interesting properties for gene therapy applications and are expected to contribute to the development of gene therapies for rare cancers.
Alphaviruses are a class of RNA viruses that can replicate in large numbers within the cytoplasm of the host cell. The replacement of structural protein genes with exogenous genes in an alphavirus vector still has many of the biological properties of an alphavirus such as a broad host spectrum of infection, the ability to self-replicate, and induce apoptosis in transfected cells, while being able to express exogenous genes in large numbers and not integrating easily with the host genome. Currently, Sindbis virus (SIN), Semliki forest virus (SFV), and Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEE) have been developed as expression vectors and are widely used in gene therapy and molecular biology research.
Fig. 1 Alphavirus life-cycle. (Lundstrom K, 2015)
Our Services
Our researchers provide customers with the development services of alphavirus vectors for gene therapy of rare diseases. Our services include, but are not limited to:
- Development of alphavirus vector systems
We have developed gene delivery systems for naked RNA, plasmid DNA, and recombinant viral particles. We offer different alphavirus vector systems depending on the specific project needs of our customers, including: - Replication-deficient recombinant virus particles
- Replication-proficient recombinant virus particles
- Layered DNA/RNA vectors
- Modification of alphavirus vectors
We help our customers design a variety of modified alphavirus vectors, such as the second-generation helper vector pSFV-helper2, to achieve enhanced levels of heterologous gene expression, reduced cytotoxicity, and improved biosafety. We offer a variety of strategies, such as enhancing transgene expression by introducing translation-enhancing signals for capsid proteins into SFV expression vectors or reducing the cytopathic effects of alphavirus vectors by introducing mutations into non-structural genes. - Development of alphavirus vectors for tissue-specific cancer therapy
We help customers achieve tumor targeting of alphavirus vectors in gene therapy through a variety of strategies, such as the engineering of liposome-encapsulated nucleic acids and virus particles.
Applications in Gene Therapy
- Tumor targeting and cancer therapy
- Development of cancer vaccines
- Development of RNAi-based gene therapies
Our company has many years of successful experience in providing customers with the most comprehensive and advanced virus carrier delivery technology. We provide development services for a variety of new low-cytotoxic alphavirus vectors to meet the needs of gene delivery in research and preclinical research. If you are interested in our services, please feel free to contact us for more details.
Reference
- Lundstrom, K. Alphaviruses in gene therapy. Viruses, 2015, 7(5): 2321-2333.
All of our services and products are intended for preclinical research use only and cannot be used to diagnose, treat or manage patients.