Viral Vector Core

National Institute Of Environmental Health Sciences

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

The Viral Vector Core facility currently offers support for production, purification, titering, and validation of twelve types of viruses: Adenovirus, Adenoassociated virus (AAV), coronaviruses (229E, OC43, NL63, and MHV), Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV), Influenza A, lentiviruses including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), Rabies-delta-G (SAD-B19-dG, dGL, SiR, and CVS-N2c), Retrovirus, Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), Sindbis Virus, vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) and Zika virus. The core utilizes multiple vector systems to safely produce recombinant, pseudotyped and wild type viruses. This year, the Viral Vector Core provided services for propagation and transduction assays using SARS coronavirus and SARS coronavirus 2 spike pseudotyped virions and coronavirus strains 229E, OC43, NL63, and MHV. The Viral Vector Core offers SARS coronavirus and SARS coronavirus 2 Wuhan, UK (alpha), South Africa (beta), Brazil, India (delta), and Omicron spike variant pseudotyped lentiviruses and VSVs. These virions were used in transduction assays to screen a multitude of anti-viral reagents. SARS-CoV-2 pseudotyped virions were also utilized for structural studies of the virus spike. In addition, the core facility developed transduction protocols for gene delivery to primary or immortalized cell lines, mouse fertilized eggs, and animal tissue. In the past year, the Viral Vector Core has packaged and validated over 366 viral samples for gene delivery. These vectors have been utilized in research to express ion channels, transcription factors, biological indicators, hormone receptors, secreted protein expression and purification, gene knockdown by shRNA or genetic modification using CRISPR components. Viral vectors were also used to introduce genes into primary and immortalized cell lines, mouse and rat tissue, or cultured tissue. Other difficult to transfect cell lines, such as hematopoietic and mouse embryonic cells, were also successfully transduced using viral vectors. Lentiviral vectors facilitated immortalizing primary cell lines for toxicological studies and several viral strains were imported for use in immunological studies. The Viral Vector Core supports research in the Division of National Toxicology Program (DNTP), Clinical Research Branch (CRB), Epigenetic and Stem Cell Biology Laboratory (ESCBL), Genome Integrity and Structural Biology Laboratory (GISBL), Immunity, Inflammation and Disease Laboratory (IIDL), Neurobiology Laboratory (NL), Signal Transduction Laboratory (STL), and Reproductive and Developmental Biology Laboratory (RDBL) at the NIEHS by providing highly effective means of gene delivery. The core also provided viral products for laboratories in the NIA, NIAAA, NIDDK, NIDCR, NIDDK, NINDS and NCI.