Evaluating the Safety of Retroviral Vectors Based on Insertional Oncogene Activation and Blocked Differentiation in Cultured Thymocytes
Open accessAbstract
Insertional oncogenesis due to retroviral (RV) vector integration has caused recurrent leukemia in multiple gene therapy trials, predominantly due to vector integration effects at the LMO2 locus. While currently available preclinical safety models have been used for evaluating vector safety, none have predicted or reproduced the recurrent LMO2 integrations seen in previous X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (X-SCID) and Wiskott-Aldrich clinical gene therapy trials. We now describe a new assay for assessing vector safety that recapitulates naturally occurring insertions into Lmo2 and other T-cell proto-oncogenes leading to a preleukemic developmental arrest in primary murine thymocytes cultured in vitro. This assay was used to compare the relative oncogenic potential of a variety of gamma-RV and lentiviral vectors and to assess the risk conferred by various transcriptional elements contained in these genomes. Gamma-RV vectors that contained full viral long-terminal repeats were most prone to causing double negative 2 (DN2) arrest and led to repeated cases of Lmo2 pathway activation, while lentiviral vectors containing these same elements were significantly less prone to activate proto-oncogenes or cause DN2 arrest. This work provides a new preclinical assay that is especially relevant for assessing safety in SCID disorders and provides a new tool for designing safer RV vectors.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
An assay developed to test the oncogenic potential of gammaretroviral and lentiviral vectors may further improve safety when designing vectors for clinical use.
“An assay developed to test the oncogenic potential of gammaretroviral and lentiviral vectors may further improve safety when designing vectors for clinical use [60].”
From Clinical use of lentiviral vectors (2018) · cites this paper as [60]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 51 · Cited by 42
Research works printed but not linked: 45
- Hacein-Bey-Abina, S, Von Kalle, C, Schmidt, M, McCormack, MP, Wulffraat, N, Leboulch, P et al. (2003). LMO2-associated clonal T cell proliferation in two patients after gene therapy for SCID-X1. Science 302: 415–419. 14564000
- Howe, SJ, Mansour, MR, Schwarzwaelder, K, Bartholomae, C, Hubank, M, Kempski, H et al. (2008). Insertional mutagenesis combined with acquired somatic mutations causes leukemogenesis following gene therapy of SCID-X1 patients. J Clin Invest 118: 3143–3150. 18688286 PMC2496964
- Braun, CJ, Boztug, K, Paruzynski, A, Witzel, M, Schwarzer, A, Rothe, M et al. (2014). Gene therapy for Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome—long-term efficacy and genotoxicity. Sci Transl Med 6: 227ra33. 24622513
- Modlich, U, Bohne, J, Schmidt, M, von Kalle, C, Knöss, S, Schambach, A et al. (2006). Cell-culture assays reveal the importance of retroviral vector design for insertional genotoxicity. Blood 108: 2545–2553. 16825499 PMC1895590
- Modlich, U, Navarro, S, Zychlinski, D, Maetzig, T, Knoess, S, Brugman, MH et al. (2009). Insertional transformation of hematopoietic cells by self-inactivating lentiviral and gammaretroviral vectors. Mol Ther 17: 1919–1928. 19672245 PMC2835038
- Montini, E, Cesana, D, Schmidt, M, Sanvito, F, Ponzoni, M, Bartholomae, C et al. (2006). Hematopoietic stem cell gene transfer in a tumor-prone mouse model uncovers low genotoxicity of lentiviral vector integration. Nat Biotechnol 24: 687–696. 16732270
- Zhou, S, Ma, Z, Lu, T, Janke, L, Gray, JT and Sorrentino, BP (2013). Mouse transplant models for evaluating the oncogenic risk of a self-inactivating XSCID lentiviral vector. PLoS One 8: e62333. 23626802 PMC3633865
- Ryu, BY, Evans-Galea, MV, Gray, JT, Bodine, DM, Persons, DA and Nienhuis, AW (2008). An experimental system for the evaluation of retroviral vector design to diminish the risk for proto-oncogene activation. Blood 111: 1866–1875. 17991809 PMC2234041
- Zhou, S, Mody, D, DeRavin, SS, Hauer, J, Lu, T, Ma, Z et al. (2010). A self-inactivating lentiviral vector for SCID-X1 gene therapy that does not activate LMO2 expression in human T cells. Blood 116: 900–908. 20457870 PMC2924228
- Kiem, HP, Baum, C, Bushman, FD, Byrne, BJ, Carter, BJ, Cavagnaro, J et al. (2014). Charting a clear path: the ASGCT Standardized Pathways Conference. Mol Ther 22: 1235–1238. 24981438 PMC4088998
- Treanor, LM, Volanakis, EJ, Zhou, S, Lu, T, Sherr, CJ and Sorrentino, BP (2011). Functional interactions between Lmo2, the Arf tumor suppressor, and Notch1 in murine T-cell malignancies. Blood 117: 5453–5462. 21427293 PMC3109717
- McCormack, MP, Young, LF, Vasudevan, S, de Graaf, CA, Codrington, R, Rabbitts, TH et al. (2010). The Lmo2 oncogene initiates leukemia in mice by inducing thymocyte self-renewal. Science 327: 879–883. 20093438
- Bell, JJ and Bhandoola, A (2008). The earliest thymic progenitors for T cells possess myeloid lineage potential. Nature 452: 764–767. 18401411
- Larson, RC, Osada, H, Larson, TA, Lavenir, I and Rabbitts, TH (1995). The oncogenic LIM protein Rbtn2 causes thymic developmental aberrations that precede malignancy in transgenic mice. Oncogene 11: 853–862. 7545805
- Treanor, LM, Zhou, S, Janke, L, Churchman, ML, Ma, Z, Lu, T et al. (2014). Interleukin-7 receptor mutants initiate early T cell precursor leukemia in murine thymocyte progenitors with multipotent potential. J Exp Med 211: 701–713. 24687960 PMC3978278
- Schmitt, TM and Zúñiga-Pflücker, JC (2002). Induction of T cell development from hematopoietic progenitor cells by delta-like-1 in vitro. Immunity 17: 749–756. 12479821
- Aker, M, Tubb, J, Groth, AC, Bukovsky, AA, Bell, AC, Felsenfeld, G et al. (2007). Extended core sequences from the cHS4 insulator are necessary for protecting retroviral vectors from silencing position effects. Hum Gene Ther 18: 333–343. 17411365
- Hacein-Bey-Abina, S, Le Deist, F, Carlier, F, Bouneaud, C, Hue, C, De Villartay, JP et al. (2002). Sustained correction of X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency by ex vivo gene therapy. N Engl J Med 346: 1185–1193. 11961146
- Stein, S, Ott, MG, Schultze-Strasser, S, Jauch, A, Burwinkel, B, Kinner, A et al. (2010). Genomic instability and myelodysplasia with monosomy 7 consequent to EVI1 activation after gene therapy for chronic granulomatous disease. Nat Med 16: 198–204. 20098431
- Hanawa, H, Kelly, PF, Nathwani, AC, Persons, DA, Vandergriff, JA, Hargrove, P et al. (2002). Comparison of various envelope proteins for their ability to pseudotype lentiviral vectors and transduce primitive hematopoietic cells from human blood. Mol Ther 5: 242–251. 11863413
- Challita, PM, Skelton, D, el-Khoueiry, A, Yu, XJ, Weinberg, K and Kohn, DB (1995). Multiple modifications in cis elements of the long terminal repeat of retroviral vectors lead to increased expression and decreased DNA methylation in embryonic carcinoma cells. J Virol 69: 748–755. 7815539 PMC188638
- Arumugam, PI, Urbinati, F, Velu, CS, Higashimoto, T, Grimes, HL and Malik, P (2009). The 3′ region of the chicken hypersensitive site-4 insulator has properties similar to its core and is required for full insulator activity. PLoS One 4: e6995. 19746166 PMC2736623
- Koldej, RM, Carney, G, Wielgosz, MM, Zhou, S, Zhan, J, Sorrentino, BP et al. (2013). Comparison of insulators and promoters for expression of the Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome protein using lentiviral vectors. Hum Gene Ther Clin Dev 24: 77–85. 23786330 PMC4003467
- Zhou, S, Bonner, MA, Wang, YD, Rapp, S, De Ravin, SS, Malech, HL et al. (2015). Quantitative shearing linear amplification polymerase chain reaction: an improved method for quantifying lentiviral vector insertion sites in transplanted hematopoietic cell systems. Hum Gene Ther Methods 26: 4–12. 25545666 PMC4337463
- Cavazzana-Calvo, M, Hacein-Bey, S, de Saint Basile, G, Gross, F, Yvon, E, Nusbaum, P et al. (2000). Gene therapy of human severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID)-X1 disease. Science 288: 669–672. 10784449
- Homminga, I, Pieters, R, Langerak, AW, de Rooi, JJ, Stubbs, A, Verstegen, M et al. (2011). Integrated transcript and genome analyses reveal NKX2-1 and MEF2C as potential oncogenes in T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Cancer Cell 19: 484–497. 21481790
- Zuurbier, L, Gutierrez, A, Mullighan, CG, Canté-Barrett, K, Gevaert, AO, de Rooi, J et al. (2014). Immature MEF2C-dysregulated T-cell leukemia patients have an early T-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia gene signature and typically have non-rearranged T-cell receptors. Haematologica 99: 94–102. 23975177 PMC4007923
- Gekas, C, Rhodes, KE, Gereige, LM, Helgadottir, H, Ferrari, R, Kurdistani, SK et al. (2009). Mef2C is a lineage-restricted target of Scl/Tal1 and regulates megakaryopoiesis and B-cell homeostasis. Blood 113: 3461–3471. 19211936 PMC2945827
- Smith, S, Tripathi, R, Goodings, C, Cleveland, S, Mathias, E, Hardaway, JA et al. (2014). LIM domain only-2 (LMO2) induces T-cell leukemia by two distinct pathways. PLoS One 9: e85883. 24465765 PMC3897537
- Goodings, C, Smith, E, Mathias, E, Elliott, N, Cleveland, SM, Tripathi, RM et al. (2015). Hhex is required at multiple stages of adult hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell differentiation. Stem Cells 33: 2628–2641. 25968920 PMC4641572
- Evans-Galea, MV, Wielgosz, MM, Hanawa, H, Srivastava, DK and Nienhuis, AW (2007). Suppression of clonal dominance in cultured human lymphoid cells by addition of the cHS4 insulator to a lentiviral vector. Mol Ther 15: 801–809. 17299406
- Curtis, DJ and McCormack, MP (2010). The molecular basis of Lmo2-induced T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Clin Cancer Res 16: 5618–5623. 20861166
- Ott, MG, Schmidt, M, Schwarzwaelder, K, Stein, S, Siler, U, Koehl, U et al. (2006). Correction of X-linked chronic granulomatous disease by gene therapy, augmented by insertional activation of MDS1-EVI1, PRDM16 or SETBP1. Nat Med 12: 401–409. 16582916
- McCormack, MP and Rabbitts, TH (2004). Activation of the T-cell oncogene LMO2 after gene therapy for X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency. N Engl J Med 350: 913–922. 14985489
- Du, Y, Jenkins, NA and Copeland, NG (2005). Insertional mutagenesis identifies genes that promote the immortalization of primary bone marrow progenitor cells. Blood 106: 3932–3939. 16109773 PMC1895096
- Du, Y, Spence, SE, Jenkins, NA and Copeland, NG (2005). Cooperating cancer-gene identification through oncogenic-retrovirus-induced insertional mutagenesis. Blood 106: 2498–2505. 15961513 PMC1895273
- Modlich, U, Schambach, A, Brugman, MH, Wicke, DC, Knoess, S, Li, Z et al. (2008). Leukemia induction after a single retroviral vector insertion in Evi1 or Prdm16. Leukemia 22: 1519–1528. 18496560
- Yu, H, Neale, G, Zhang, H, Lee, HM, Ma, Z, Zhou, S et al. (2014). Downregulation of Prdm16 mRNA is a specific antileukemic mechanism during HOXB4-mediated HSC expansion in vivo. Blood 124: 1737–1747. 25082879 PMC4162106
- Montini, E, Cesana, D, Schmidt, M, Sanvito, F, Bartholomae, CC, Ranzani, M et al. (2009). The genotoxic potential of retroviral vectors is strongly modulated by vector design and integration site selection in a mouse model of HSC gene therapy. J Clin Invest 119: 964–975. 19307726 PMC2662564
- Arumugam, PI, Higashimoto, T, Urbinati, F, Modlich, U, Nestheide, S, Xia, P et al. (2009). Genotoxic potential of lineage-specific lentivirus vectors carrying the beta-globin locus control region. Mol Ther 17: 1929–1937. 19707188 PMC2835044
- Astrakhan, A, Sather, BD, Ryu, BY, Khim, S, Singh, S, Humblet-Baron, S et al. (2012). Ubiquitous high-level gene expression in hematopoietic lineages provides effective lentiviral gene therapy of murine Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome. Blood 119: 4395–4407. 22431569 PMC3362358
- Groth, AC, Liu, M, Wang, H, Lovelett, E and Emery, DW (2013). Identification and characterization of enhancer-blocking insulators to reduce retroviral vector genotoxicity. PLoS One 8: e76528. 24098520 PMC3789682
- Kamijo, T, Bodner, S, van de Kamp, E, Randle, DH and Sherr, CJ (1999). Tumor spectrum in ARF-deficient mice. Cancer Res 59: 2217–2222. 10232611
- Persons, DA, Allay, JA, Allay, ER, Ashmun, RA, Orlic, D, Jane, SM et al. (1999). Enforced expression of the GATA-2 transcription factor blocks normal hematopoiesis. Blood 93: 488–499. 9885210
- Wielgosz, MM, Kim, YS, Carney, GG, Zhan, J, Reddivari, M, Coop, T et al. (2015). Generation of a lentiviral vector producer cell clone for human Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome gene therapy. Mol Ther Methods Clin Dev 2: 14063. 26052531 PMC4449020
- Authors
- Zhou, S., Fatima, S., Ma, Z., Wang, Y.-D., Lu, T., Janke, L. J., Du, Y., & Sorrentino, B. P.
- Affiliations
- St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (US)
- Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (US)
- Corresponding author
- Sorrentino, Brian P
- Venue
- Molecular Therapy
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2016-06
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1090-1099
- ISSN
- 1525-0016 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4923324
- OpenAlex
- W2293164235
- Cited by
- 42
- References
- 51
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 3
- FWCI
- 3.23
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Molecular Therapy (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (P01HL053749)
- National Cancer Institute (P30CA021765)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Virus-based gene therapy research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › CAR-T cell therapy research
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › CRISPR and Genetic Engineering
- Keywords
- retroviral vectors, vector safety, insertional oncogenesis, LMO2, thymocytes, long terminal repeat, lentiviral vectors, gammaretroviral vectors, X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency, Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Cell Differentiation, Cells, Cultured, Disease Models, Animal, Genetic Vectors, Humans, Up-Regulation, Lentivirus, Mutagenesis, Insertional, Gammaretrovirus, Adaptor Proteins, Signal Transducing, Mice, Precursor T-Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia-Lymphoma, Thymocytes, LIM Domain Proteins, MEF2 Transcription Factors
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review