Murine Leukemia Induced by Retroviral Gene Marking

摘要

Somatic gene transfer is a promising therapeutic strategy, but it may also evoke new types of side effects related to genetic damage or transgene activity. Retroviral vectors, the best tool current- ly available for stable genetic modification, in- tegrate at random positions in the cellular ge- nome. The risk of mutagenis of cellular se- quences promoting a malignant phenotype is about 10~-7 per insertion (1). As tumor develop- ment requires further genetic lesions, a single copy of an otherwise innocuous transgene is nto expected to produce server side effects. Never- theless, we observed luekemia induction in an animal model of retroviral gene marking.