Using a method of retroviral gene transduction we have been able to generate conditionally immortalized long-term hematopoietic stem cell lines from primary mouse blood stem cells. Phase I of this project included applying this technology to generate human cell lines. In addition, the project included testing a non-viral method to generate the stem cell lines from mice. Phase II of the project will entail optimizing large-scale production of protein transduced long-term hematopoietic stem cells from human cells that are resistant to HIV infection for eventual testing in larger animals and human clinical trials.
This project seeks to optimize a novel method to generate large amounts of human blood stem cells for clinical use in the prevention and treatment of HIV infection. Once this method has been validated for large-scale production, the long-term goal for benefiting public health will be to use this system to generate HIV resistant cells in infected individuals or in populations that are at-risk for acquiring the HIV virus.
| Bird, Gregory A; Polsky, Avital; Estes, Patricia et al. (2014) Expansion of human and murine hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells ex vivo without genetic modification using MYC and Bcl-2 fusion proteins. PLoS One 9:e105525 |
