title: Surmounting limited gene delivery into primary immune cell populations: Efficient cell type-specific adenoviral transduction by CAR.
abstract: Ectopic gene expression studies in primary immune cells have been notoriously difficult to perform due to the limitations in conventional transfection and viral transduction methods. Although replication-defective adenoviruses provide an attractive alternative for gene delivery, their use has been hampered by the limited susceptibility of murine leukocytes to adenoviral infection, due to insufficient expression of the human coxsackie/adenovirus receptor (CAR). In this issue of the European Journal of Immunology, Heger et al. [Eur. J. Immunol. 2015. 45: XXXX-XXXX] report the generation of transgenic mice that enable conditional Cre/loxP-mediated expression of human CAR. The authors demonstrate that this R26/CAG-CAR∆1(StopF) mouse strain facilitates the faithful monitoring of Cre activity in situ as well as the specific and efficient adenoviral transduction of primary immune cell populations in vitro. Further tweaking of the system towards more efficient gene transfer in vivo remains a future challenge.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Molecular Medicine, University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, 55131 Mainz, Germany.
authors.forename: Björn E
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Clausen
authors.affiliation: Institute for Molecular Medicine, University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, 55131 Mainz, Germany.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Brand
authors.affiliation: Institute for Molecular Medicine, University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, 55131 Mainz, Germany.
authors.forename: Khalad
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Karram
mesh_terms: D000256:Adenoviridae / Q000235:genetics*; D000818:Animals; D018390:Gene Targeting; D017930:Genes, Reporter; D005822:Genetic Vectors / Q000235:genetics*; D059765:Homologous Recombination; D006801:Humans; D019426:Integrases / Q000378:metabolism*; D014161:Transduction, Genetic
chemical_list: C045073:Cre recombinase; D019426:Integrases
keywords: Adenoviral transduction; Coxsackie/adenovirus receptor; Cre/loxP-system; Knock-in mouse model; Recombinant adenovirus