A Drug-Tunable Gene Therapy for Broad-Spectrum Protection against Retinal Degeneration.

ABSTRACT: Retinal degenerations are a large cluster of diseases characterized by the irreversible loss of light-sensitive photoreceptors that impairs the vision of 9.1 million people in the US. An attractive treatment option is to use gene therapy to deliver broad-spectrum neuroprotective factors. However, this approach has had limited clinical translation because of the inability to control transgene expression. To address this problem, we generated an adeno-associated virus vector named RPF2 that was engineered to express domains of leukemia inhibitory factor fused to the destabilization domain of bacterial dihydrofolate reductase. Fusion proteins containing the destabilization domain are degraded in mammalian cells but can be stabilized with the binding of the drug trimethoprim. Our data show tha

SUBMITTER: Santiago CP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6171322 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature