title: New developments in lentiviral vector design, production and purification.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Lentiviruses are a very potent class of viral vectors for which there is presently a rapidly growing interest for a number of gene therapy. However, their construction, production and purification need to be performed according to state-of-the-art techniques in order to obtain sufficient quantities of high purity material of any usefulness and safety.
  
  
  METHODS
  The recent advances in the field of recombinant lentivirus vector design, production and purification will be reviewed with an eye toward its utilization for gene therapy. Such a review should be helpful for the potential user of this technology.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The principal hurdles toward the use of recombinant lentivirus as a gene therapy vector are the low titer at which it is produced as well as the difficulty to purify it at an acceptable level without degrading it. The recent advances in the bioproduction of this vector suggest these issues are about to be resolved, making the retrovirus gene therapy a mature technology.
authors.affiliation: Chemical Engineering Department, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Campus Bellaterra, Cerdanyola del Vallès (08193), Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Maria Mercedes
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Segura
authors.forename: Mathias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mangion
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gaillet
authors.forename: Alain
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Garnier
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015195:Drug Design; D015316:Genetic Therapy; D005822:Genetic Vectors / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D006801:Humans; D016086:Lentivirus / Q000235:genetics*