Ex Vivo Selection of Transduced Hematopoietic Stem Cells for Gene Therapy of ß-Hemoglobinopathies.

Although gene transfer to hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) has shown therapeutic efficacy in recent trials for several individuals with inherited disorders, transduction incompleteness of the HSC population remains a hurdle to yield a cure for all patients with reasonably low integrated vector numbers. In previous attempts at HSC selection, massive loss of transduced HSCs, contamination with non-transduced cells, or lack of applicability to large cell populations has rendered the procedures out of reach for human applications. Here, we fused codon-optimized puromycin N-acetyltransferase to herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase. When expressed from a ubiquitous promoter within a complex lentiviral vector comprising the ßAT87Q-globin gene, viral titers and therapeutic gene expression were maintained at effective levels. Complete selection and preservation of transduced HSCs were achieved after brief exposure to puromycin in the presence of MDR1 blocking agents, suggesting the procedure's suitability for human clinical applications while affording the additional safety of conditional suicide.

Lentivirus vectors in ß-thalassemia.

Patients with ß-thalassemia major require lifelong transfusions and iron chelation, regardless of the type of causative mutations (e.g., ß°, ß(E)/ß°). The only available curative therapy is allogeneic hematopoietic transplantation, although most patients do not have an HLA-matched, geno-identical donor, and those who do still risk graft-versus-host disease. Hence, gene therapy by ex vivo transfer of a functional ß-globin gene is an attractive novel therapeutic modality. In ß-thalassemia, transfer of a therapeutic globin gene does not confer a selective advantage to transduced stem cells, and complex DNA regulatory sequences have to be present within the transfer vector for proper expression. This is why lentiviral vectors have proven especially suited for this application, and the first Phase I/II human clinical trial was initiated. Here, we report on the first gene therapy patient with severe ß(E)/ß°-thalassemia, who has become transfusion-independent, and provide methods and protocols used in the context of this clinical trial.

Distribution of lentiviral vector integration sites in mice following therapeutic gene transfer to treat ß-thalassemia.

A lentiviral vector encoding ß-globin flanked by insulator elements has been used to treat ß-thalassemia (ß-Thal) successfully in one human subject. However, a clonal expansion was observed after integration in the HMGA2 locus, raising the question of how commonly lentiviral integration would be associated with possible insertional activation. Here, we report correcting ß-Thal in a murine model using the same vector and a busulfan-conditioning regimen, allowing us to investigate efficacy and clonal evolution at 9.2 months after transplantation of bone marrow cells. The five gene-corrected recipient mice showed near normal levels of hemoglobin, reduced accumulation of reticulocytes, and normalization of spleen weights. Mapping of integration sites pretransplantation showed the expected favored integration in transcription units. The numbers of gene-corrected long-term repopulating cells deduced from the numbers of unique integrants indicated oligoclonal reconstitution. Clonal abundance was quantified using a Mu transposon-mediated method, indicating that clones with integration sites near growth-control genes were not enriched during growth. No integration sites involving HMGA2 were detected. Cells containing integration sites in genes became less common after prolonged growth, suggesting negative selection. Thus, ß-Thal gene correction in mice can be achieved without expansion of cells harboring vectors integrated near genes involved in growth control.

Correction of murine ß-thalassemia after minimal lentiviral gene transfer and homeostatic in vivo erythroid expansion.

A challenge for gene therapy of genetic diseases is to maintain corrected cell populations in subjects undergoing transplantation in cases in which the corrected cells do not have intrinsic selective advantage over nontransduced cells. For inherited hematopoietic disorders, limitations include inefficient transduction of stem cell pools, the requirement for toxic myelosuppression, and a lack of optimal methods for cell selection after transduction. Here, we have designed a lentiviral vector that encodes human ß-globin and a truncated erythropoietin receptor, both under erythroid-specific transcriptional control. This truncated receptor confers enhanced sensitivity to erythropoietin and a benign course in human carriers. Transplantation of marrow transduced with the vector into syngenic thalassemic mice, which have elevated plasma erythropoietin levels, resulted in long-term correction of the disease even at low ratios of transduced/untransduced cells. Amplification of the red over the white blood cell lineages was self-controlled and averaged ∼ 100-fold instead of ∼ 5-fold for ß-globin expression alone. There was no detectable amplification of white blood cells or alteration of hematopoietic homeostasis. Notwithstanding legitimate safety concerns in the context of randomly integrating vectors, this approach may prove especially valuable in combination with targeted integration or in situ homologous recombination/repair and may lower the required level of pretransplantation myelosuppression.