Packaging systems for human recombinant adenovirus to be used in gene therapy

Abstract

The invention provides improved methods and products based on adenoviral materials which can advantageously be used in for instance gene therapy. In one aspect an adenoviral vector is provided which has no overlap with a suitable packaging cell line which is another aspect of invention. This combination excludes the possibility of homologous recombination, thereby excluding the possibility of the formation of replication competent adenovirus. In another aspect an adenovirus based helper construct which by its size is incapable of being encapsidated. This helper virus can be transferred into any suitable host cell making it a packaging cell. Further a number of useful mutations to adenoviral based materials and combinations of such mutations are disclosed, which all have in common the safety of the methods and the products, in particular avoiding the production of replication competent adenovirus and/or interference with the immune system. Further a method of intracellular amplification is provided.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.