Efficient conditional gene expression following transplantation of retrovirally transduced bone marrow stem cells

Abstract

Retroviral gene therapy combined with bone marrow stem cell transplantation can be used to generate mice with ectopic gene expression in the bone marrow compartment in a quick and cost effective manner when compared to generating and maintaining transgenic mouse lines. However a limitation of this procedure is the lack of cell specificity in gene expression that is associated with the use of endogenous retroviral promoters. Restricting gene expression to specific cell subsets utilising tissue-specific promoter driven retroviral vectors is a challenge. Here we describe the generation of conditional expression of retrovirally encoded genes in specific bone marrow derived cell lineages utilisin..