Supplemental Article to Lesch et al. (2011); Journal club 1: This article provides interesting support to the effectiveness of lentivirus vectors for gene therapy treatment. Not only is HIV or lentivirus efficient at transduction to rapidly dividing cells, it is also capable of transduction to nondividing cells; making it an exciting vector for gene therapy treatment. The range of diseases that could be treatable with a gene therapy vector that can target other cell types than hematopoietic cells could transform the science of gene therapy.

Supplementary Article to Lesch et al. (2011); journal club 1: This article helps us understand the dangers of attenuated lentiviruses used for gene therapy and other clinical applications. It also details a method for screening newly synthesized lentiviruses for replication competency.

Supplemental Article to Lesch et al. (2011): This article talks about one of the disorders that is treatable by gene therapy: a relatively rare x-linked chromosomal abnormality that causes immunodeficiency as a result of hematopoietic cell damage causing inefficient T-cell receptor binding. Lentiviruses appear to be good vectors for the gene therapy treatment of this disorder as a highly regulated therapy is required for a beneficial outcome.

Review Article; Journal club 1: This is a basic review article about HIV virus vectors and their potential uses in clinical science.

Focus Article; Journal club 1:This is an article that details a novel technique for production of HIV (lentiviral) vectors for use as tools of gene therapy. The fascinating approach that was developed by the authors uses baculovirus as a vector to infect human embryonic kidney cells in culture with the genes necessary to produce a lentiviral vector with therapeutic capabilities.

This is an interesting article about the gene products that are up-regulated by a rhinovirus infection of respiratory tract epithelial cells, and how that response is limited with the introduction of a cigarette smoke extract. Experiment carried out in human epithelial tissue culture and gene products measured with PCR and immunoblotting.