The overall goal of this initial stage in developing a Virus Vector Core within the Cancer Center is to promote and coordinate the exchange of information, utilization of expertise, and sharing of virus vector reagents useful for basic virology, gene therapy, and cancer research. The specific objectives are: (1) to maintain, inventory and distribute a library of both standard and custom recombinant adenovirus, AAV, retrovirus, lentivirus, herpesvirus, and sindbis virus vector, including for example, GFP, betaGAL, and LUC expression vectors and related cell lines, and transfer plasmids; (2) to assist investigators in designing and generating specific novel virus vectors for constitutive or inducible expression of foreign genes for basic and clinical research purposes; (3) to provide facilities, expertise, and assistance with moderate scale production and quality control of experimental research grade rAAV and Adenovirus vectors. (4) to provide facilities, reagents and assistance for generation and moderate scale production of quality controlled recombinant retrovirus or lentivirus vectors used for stable transduction of primary mouse and human hematopoietic cells. It is also anticipated that this Core Resource will foster and encourage utilization of the very strong local basic Virology research contingent at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions for both, firstly, developing collaborative approaches to design and test the much needed new and improved next generation virus vector expression systems, and secondly, promoting interactions with Clinical Research interested in exploiting virus vectors for gene therapy and anti-cancer therapy purposes.
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