Increasing transduction efficiency by lentivirus vectors using heat shock and cell cycle specific integration

Gene therapy has evolved over the past 20 years and has seen both great success and astounding failure. Lentivirus vectors have been shown to be powerful tools for gene therapy that can deliver a transgene to an extremely wide variety of cell types. However, use of these vectors still carries risks of insertional mutagenesis and viral toxicity. Safety can be increased if we can, in any given circumstance, use fewer viral particles or less overall viral protein. Therefore, strategies that increase efficiency of viral transduction will affect an increase in safety. Both cell cycle timing and heat shock have been used to increase the efficiency of various methods of gene delivery. We show that combining these techniques offers greater transduction efficiency than either technique alone, due to cell cycle specific integration that is observed as increased transgene expression.