Patent ID: 8530153

Claim:
A method of making stably transduced mammalian dendritic cells with altered immune properties, comprising providing a population of mammalian dendritic cells; stably transducing the cells with a recombinant helper-free lentivirus comprising a genome having a transcription cassette comprising nucleic acid sequences for CD4, the expression of which sequences in the dendritic cells is capable of inducing RNAi, thereby decreasing cell surface expression of CD40; and selecting transduced dendritic cells with decreased levels of CD40 expression that result in antigen-specific T cell tolerization or Th2 polarization in vivo relative to corresponding dendritic cells that are not transduced with the recombinant helper-free lentivirus, wherein the nucleic acid sequences for CD40 comprise CTGGACAAGCTGTGAGGATAA (SEQ ID NO:6), GCAGGGTACTGGCTAAATAAA (SEQ ID NO:1) or CCAAAGGATAATGAGATGTTA (SEQ ID NO:2).