WSU Virology

This article discusses the drama behind the scenes of the debate over publication of the H5N1 transmissibility studies and the effect it had on young scientists carrying out the work.

Nice figure describing a phage display library

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.

Oncolytic virotherapy for cancer treatment utilizes viruses for selective infection and death of cancer cells without any adverse effect on normal cells. We previously reported that the human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a novel oncolytic virus against androgen-independent PC-3 human prostate cancer cells.

How Oncolytic virus control the inflammation? - Oncolytic virus treatment induced at least a twofold increase or decrease in the expression of 50 genes relative to expression in the PBS-treated tumors (Supplementary Table 1, available online). Of these 50 genes, 48 displayed an increase in expression in the oncolytic virus - treated tumors compared with the controltreated tumors, suggesting that oncolytic virus treatment induced an inflammatory response - To confirm the role of the immune response in oncolytic virus - induced vascular hyperpermeability, we evaluated changes in oncolytic virus - induced vascular leakage in tumor-bearing rats that had been treated with cyclophosphamide before oncolytic virus injection. In addition to its immunosuppressive effects, cyclophosphamide blocks infl ammation and reduces viral clearance, both of which increase the propagation of oncolytic viruses, thereby enhancing therapeutic effi cacy of oncolytic viruses. (Effect of Tumor Microenvironment Modulation on the Efficacy of Oncolytic Virus Therapy, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Effect%20of%20Tumor%20Microenvironment%20Modulation%20on%20the%20Efficacy%20of%20Oncolytic%20Virus%20Therapy)

Review paper - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1442-2042.2009.02383.x/full

This is the final supplementary article.

This is another supplementary article for my paper.

This is one of my supplementary articles.

This is the topic of my focus paper.

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.

Great paper for introductory look at adapting adeno-associated viruses (AAV) to different cell tropisms.  Although the scope of this article is the CNS, and more specifically the brain.  Also goes over how brain vasculature expresses different characteristics in disease states that allows for specification of AAVs to have tropism for the diseased epithelial beds.