Adeno-associated viruses (AAV) and their vectors are icosahedral 20-nanometer capsids containing a single-stranded DNA genome. Virus replication is characterized by a latent phase from which the virus can escape only after coinfection with a helper adenovirus or herpesvirus. Like most other nonenveloped viruses, AAVs are not known to have an active egress pathway from infected cells. In addition, they produce no cytopathogenic effects (CPEs). Therefore, release of virus from the cell is thought to be dependent on the CPE resulting from helper virus infection.
Almost all early studies using AAV vectors used capsids derived from AAV serotype 2 (AAV2). These studies demonstrated the potential of this vector platform and provided the first convincing clinical success for in vivo gene therapy, in patients with Leber’s congenital amaurosis. Vectors based on other natural AAV serotypes exhibit different tissue tropisms in vivo, have better performance in terms of transduction efficiency, and have fewer problems associated with humoral and/or cellular immunity. Several methods for large-scale production of AAV have been optimized to produce high titer and high-quality vectors.
Intervertebral disc degeneration is the leading cause of low back pain and is currently the leading cause of disability worldwide. Adeno-associated virus (AAV)-based viral vectors have emerged as powerful transgene delivery vehicles, but their respective tropism, transduction efficiency, and relative toxicity have not been systematically studied in the intervertebral disc in vivo. Here, researchers used in vivo bioluminescence imaging to systematically compare multiple AAV serotypes, injection volumes, titers, promoters, and luciferase reporters to determine which result in high transduction efficiency of murine nucleus pulposus (NP) cells in vivo. AAV6 using the CAG promoter to drive transgene expression was found to provide excellent transduction efficiency/kinetics and low in vivo toxicity when delivered into NPs in mouse tail discs at a titer of 1011 GC/mL. This study also demonstrated that in vivo transduction of NP cells was significantly enhanced using a small cell permeabilizing peptide. Taken together, these data will contribute to basic and translational research on the successful use of AAV-mediated gene delivery for IVDs.
Here, researchers sought to determine how the titer of delivered AAV particles affects transduction efficiency and transgene expression kinetics in vivo in the mouse tail IVD. Mice were injected locally (3 μL) with AAV6-CAG-fLuc particles at titers of 106, 109, or 1011 GC/mL in their Co6/7 discs. BLi was then performed at 3, 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, and 56 days following injection of AAV6-fLuc to determine the transduction efficiency and kinetics for each titer in vivo. A titer of 106 GC/mL did not produce a BLi signal at any time point tested, while a titer of 1011 provided superior results compared to 109 (Figure 1). The mean peak intensity of BLi for AAV6 was 52 P/s/mm2, which occurred earlier at 21 days, compared to the mean peak intensity on AAV2, which occurred later at 6 weeks (Figure 1A). Representative BLi images for 109 and 1011 titers (42-day time point) are shown in Figure 1B and C, respectively. In summary, a titer of 1011 GC/mL was used in all subsequent experiments.
Figure 1. Viral titer affects transduction efficiency and kinetics. (Kim C H, et al., 2022)
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