Methods of preconditioning vascular cells for transduction, methods of transduction and methods of preserving transduced cells

A method for transducing human smooth muscle (SM) cells comprising:

• (a) preconditioning said human smooth muscle cells with between 0.125 mg/ml and 0.5 mg/ml DEAE-Dextran for 1-4 minutes, so as to obtain preconditioned human smooth muscle cells,
• (b) washing said preconditioned SM cells so as to remove said DEAE-Dextran, and
• (c) contacting the preconditioned human smooth muscle cells with a viral vector comprising a retroviral nucleic acid construct or a lentivirus nucleic acid construct in a DEAE-Dextran-free transduction medium comprising the viral vector comprising the retroviral or lentiviral nucleic acid construct,
• wherein said transduction medium comprises M199 medium, and
• wherein the construct comprises a polynucleotide sequence encoding a VEGF165 polypeptide, wherein said polynucleotide sequence is as set forth in SEQ ID NO:
• 1,
• and wherein following step (c) said SM cells are characterized by at least one of increased transduction rate and increased proliferation following transduction, as compared to similar SM cells preconditioned with 1.0 mg/ml DEAE-Dextran or greater.