Keisaku Wakabayashi, Mitsuhiro Machitani, Kahori Shimizu, Masashi Tachibana, Fuminori Sakurai and Hiroyuki Mizuguchi
The adenovirus (Ad) genome encodes one or two non-coding small RNAs called virus-associated (VA)-RNAs, that are transcribed by polymerase III and support Ad replication. As previously reported, a replication-incompetent Ad vector, which is widely used in not only gene therapy studies, including clinical trials, but also basic researches as a gene delivery vehicle, as well as wild-type Ad (WT-Ad) express VA-RNAs, and VA-RNAs activate innate immunity, including the production of type I interferons. In addition, VA-RNAs perturb cellular microRNA (miRNA) expression profiles via competitive inhibition of key components involved in the miRNA maturation pathway. Although these characteristics of VA-RNAs might negatively affect the application of Ad vectors, VA-RNA expression profiles following transduction with an Ad vector have been not fully examined. In this study, we quantitatively analyzed the expression profiles of VA-RNAI, which is a major species of VA-RNAs, following transduction with Ad vectors in vitro and in vivo using real-time RT-PCR. The VA-RNAI expression levels in the cells transduced with a conventional Ad vector expressing luciferase (Ad-CAL2) at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 100 were approximately 2000- to 3000-fold lower than those infected with WT-Ad at the same MOI at 48 h after treatment. The expression levels of VA-RNAI in the mouse liver following administration with Ad-CAL2 were approximately 600-fold lower than those following administration with WT-Ad at 48 h post-administration. miRNA-mediated suppression of leaky expression of the Ad E4 genes resulted in about five-fold reduction in the VA-RNAI copy numbers in the liver following systemic administration in mice. These data provide informative clues for the development of novel safer Ad vectors.
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