Assessment of Herpesvirus saimiri as a potential human gene therapy vector

Herpesvirus saimiri has characteristics that make it amenable to developmen t as a gene therapy vector. The viral genome is thought to be capable of ac commodating large quantities of heterologous DNA while the virus itself can infect many different cell types. Virus infection has been shown in many c ases to be persistent by virtue of episomal maintenance in the target cell. In this article we examine the ability of nonselectable recombinant viruse s expressing the beta-galactosidase gene product to infect a variety of hum an cells and demonstrate that this virus could be developed as an alternati ve hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy vector. In contrast to earlier obse rvations, we demonstrate by a number of methods that the virus has the abil ity to replicate in many human cell types, suggesting the need for the deve lopment of a disabled virus for use as a gene therapy vector. J. Med. Virol . 57:269-277, 1999. (C) 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.