TARGETING THE VIRUS ASSEMBLY AND ENTRY PATHWAYS FOR ANTI-HIV GENE THERAPY

Texas Tech University Health Scis Center, Lubbock TX

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Targeting the HIV entry and assembly pathways holds promise for development of anti- HIV gene therapy vectors as disrupting the virus at multiple stages in the life cycle will likely limit the emergence of resistant mutants. Moreover, recent advances in human CD34+ stem cell transduction and transplantation have paved a way for anti-HIV gene therapy in the near future. These advances have thus prompted a search for new and potent gene therapy targets for suppression of HIV replication. While si/shRNAs against viral and cellular factors have been tested there are a limited number of studies on dominant negative (DN) viral or cellular proteins that can act as HIV inhibitors. In this regard, the Gag and Envelope proteins of HIV-1 remain an attractive yet unexploited target for anti-HIV gene therapy. Both the Gag and envelope proteins play essential roles in completion of the viral life cycle namely via promoting HIV particle assembly/budding or allowing infection into cells respectively. Notably, virus assembly not only requires the viral Gag protein but also numerous host cell factors like Tsg101, Alix, GGAs, Arfs, POSH, AP-1, AP-3 proteins etc to complete virion morphogenesis. Hence, dominant negative forms of the above genes either individually or in combination have the potential to be developed as powerful tools to target HIV-1 replication. Thus, targeting HIV replication via multiple ways will have the advantage of not only halting virus spread rapidly but also restrict the emergence of resistant isolates.