Studies on Epstein-Barr virus vector and human gene therapy

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There has been no infection system such as that which produces viruses following Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection. Therefore, it has not been possible to produce a large amount of recombinant EBV for human gene therapy. We have recently established a system for producing recombinant EBV.When considering to use the EBV vector for application to human, we need to develop the EBV vector with deletions of transforming genes. In the present study, following experiments were carried out.1. Generation of EBV recombinants deleted of the latent membrane protein, which play crucial roles in lymphocyte transformation.2. Generation of EBV recombinants incompetent for virus replication and packaging cells for their propagation :3. Generation of the amplicon system : DNA sequences containing the replication origin in a virus replicative phase and packaging signals are efficiently amplified and packaged into virus particles during virus replication. We are now trying to create cells infected with recombinant EBV with more than 200 kbp genome size. Such large EBV genomes exceed the size being packaged into virus particles. Therefore, such cells should become an ideal packaging cells for propagating amplicon DNA.Dr.Bill Sugden visited our laboratory in February, 1997. Dr.Sugiura visited Dr.Sugden's laboratory in January, 1997. Drs.Takada and Imai visited Dr.Sugden's laboratory in March, 1997. Through these communication, we discussed about mutual experimental results, and obtained many important suggestions each other.