Cap-independent multicistronic retroviral vectors

Abstract

Retroviral vectors for producing coordinately expressed polycistronic mRNA in transfected host cells. A representative retroviral construct capable of forming a proviral genome in a host cell contains a first nucleotide coding sequence, a second nucleotide coding sequence, and a third nucleotide sequence capable of hybridizing under stringent conditions to a 5′ nontranslated region (NTR) of a picornavirus RNA or its complementary RNA strand. The first, second, and third nucleotide sequences are operably linked such that transcription of the proviral genome gives rise to a messenger RNA molecule containing transcripts of the first, second, and third nucleotide sequences. The transcript of the third nucleotide sequence in the messenger RNA molecule contains a nucleic acid capable of forming a regulatory stem-loop nucleic acid structure followed by at least one operable AUG start codon. The regulatory stem-loop nucleic acid structure is capable of operably binding a translation initiation complex in a host cell such that the transcripts of the first and second nucleotide sequences in the messenger RNA molecule are coordinately expressed in the host cell.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.