Duchenne muscular dystrophy treatment with lentiviral vector containing
mini-dystrophin gene in vivo
Abstract
Duchenne muscular dystrophy is an incurable X linked recessive genetic
disease caused by mutations in the dystrophin gene. Many researchers
aimed at restoring truncated dystrophin via viral vectors. But the low
package capacity and short duration of vectors hampered their clinical
application. For these reasons, we constructed four lentiviral vectors,
which contained truncated and sequence-optimized dystrophin genes driven
by muscle specific promoter. The four lentiviral vectors stably
expressed mini-dystrophin in C2C12 muscle cells in vitro. To
estimate the treatment effect in vivo, we transferred the
lentiviral vectors into neonatal C57BL/10ScSn-
Dmdmdx mice through the local injection. The
level of modified dystrophin expression increased, while the
distribution of that also restored in treated mice. At the same time
they showed the restoration of pull force and the decrease in the number
of mononuclear cells. The remissions lasted three to six months in
vivo. Moreover, no integration sites of vectors distributed into the
oncogenes. In summary, this study has preliminarily demonstrated the
feasibility and safety of mini-dystrophin gene carried by lentiviral
vector for DMD gene therapy, and provided new strategy to restore
truncated dystrophin.