No staining was detected with LTR-lacZneo DNA as well as in untreated muscles. The higher tungsten particle concentration in the bombardment mixture correlated with more intense X-gal staining. At the gold/tungsten ratio of 1:4 the microparticles penetrated the musculus glutaeus superficialis and transfected the underlying musculus glutaeus medius as well. Immuno-cytochemical assay for human dystrophin revealed dystrophin positive myofibers (DPM) in the bombarded area up to two months after transfection. The proportion of DMP varied from 2.5% on day 17 up two 5% on day 60 after bombardment compared to only 0.5% in the control mdx mice. These results suggest the applicability of particle bombardment for gene delivery into muscle fibers.
Use of viral inducible promoters which can be activated by virus-specific transactivator proteins to drive expression of antisense (as)RNA genes appears to be an attractive approach to inhibit virus infections in vivo. To this end, we have constructed an asRNA gene expressed from the bovine leukaemia virus (BLV) U3 promoter that is complementary to the R-U5 region of the BLV genome. This is the region that is most susceptible to inhibition by asRNA. With plasmid pLU, which expresses the asRNA gene under the control of the BLV U3 promoter, 75 % inhibition of virus replication was attained in CC81 cells (the molar ratio of pLU DNA over BLV proviral DNA in the transfection mixture was 5 : 1). Plasmid pLT, which contains only the BLV U3 promoter without any asRNA-coding region,
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