Gene delivery to human sweat glands:  A model for cystic fibrosis gene therapy.
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 78
ISBN-13: 9780494163757
Description: We investigated the possibility of using human sweat glands as a model for testing cystic fibrosis (CF) gene therapy vectors. Human sweat glands are easy to obtain from skin biopsy, and could provide a safe model to study the efficacy of CF gene therapy. Various ex vivo gene delivery methods were examined using helper-dependent adenovirus vectors. We found that transduction efficiency can be enhanced by pre-treating isolated sweat glands with dispase, suggesting that the basement membrane is a critical barrier to adenoviral vectors. Using this approach, we showed that CFTR could be efficiently delivered to, and expressed by the epithelial cells of sweat glands with our helper dependent adenoviral vector containing cytokeratin 18 regulatory elements. Based on this study we propose that sweat glands might be used as an alternative model to study CF gene therapy in humans.
Notes: Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-06, page: 2700.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

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