Selection of carriers of therapeutic genes

Therapeutic viruses can spread in the brain far from the injection site

Sergey Syrov, XX2 century

It is likely that in the future, genetic therapy will be used to treat Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. It is possible to introduce new important genes into the cells of the body with the help of viruses. The development of such viruses is already underway, and scientists from the University of Veterinary Medicine in For the first time in an animal model, we studied the question of how therapeutic viruses will spread in the brain.

In the work, the materials of which are published in the journal Histochemistry and Cell Biology, it is shown that some artificial viruses are able to spread quite far from the injection site. The virus was injected into the ventral part of the striatum of the mouse brain and reached both the olfactory bulbs and the cerebellum and infected not only neurons, but also other cells.

Several viruses were used during the study. These are modifications based on HIV (type 1 and 2) and the monkey immunodeficiency virus. It has been shown that different viruses act differently in the brain. Thus, the HIV-2SEW vector reached the cerebellum and olfactory bulb, and the PBjSEW and HIV-1SEW vectors infected more neurons.

So far, the issue of the spread of vector viruses has not been raised. In earlier studies, only the area closest to the injection channel was investigated.

"In our study, we injected viral vectors into a key area of the brain responsible, among other things, for the coordination of movements," says Kirsti Witter from the Institute of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology (Institut für Anatomie, Histologie und Embryologie) University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. From there, some viruses spread quite far – they got into the cerebellum and olfactory bulbs.

Where viruses have penetrated and what types of nerve cells they have affected can be shown with the help of fluorescent proteins. A snapshot from the press release of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna Gene transfer as a treatment of neurodegenerative diseases: Viral vectors travel longer distances than previously thought.

"This is important information, because depending on the type of neurodegenerative disease, it may be necessary to achieve either the widest possible spread of the virus, or infect a certain, strictly limited area," adds the first author of the work Juraj Hlavaty (Juraj Hlavaty). – The study also shows that all tested viruses are able to infect neurons and surrounding glial cells, as expected. But different viruses show differences in the number and ratio of types of infected cells."

Depending on the virus strain used, the injections caused a mild or more pronounced reaction of the nervous tissue in mice. A strong immune response means that many glial cells are infected.

"The fact that individual viruses infected these cells better than neurons should, however, be confirmed in future experiments," notes Hlavaty.

The results of the study will help in the future to consciously choose vector viruses for therapy. "The goal is to create a set of viruses in order to select the appropriate transport for personalized therapy of neurodegenerative diseases," says Vitter.

The researchers remind that you should not be afraid of the prospect of using vector viruses created on the basis of such a dangerous pathogen as HIV. The modifications created in laboratories contain only those sections of the virus that are responsible for penetrating into the cell and embedding a section of the genetic code. The parts that determine the harmfulness of the original virus have been removed.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  21.06.2017