AN ACADEMIC CENTER FOR GENE-THERAPY RESEARCH WITH CLINICAL GRADE MANUFACTURING CAPABILITY

Huddinge University Hospital is a major teaching hospital affiliated w ith the Karolinska Institute in Southern Stockholm. For the past few y ears several groups have been working there in different areas of gene therapy relating to cancer, genetic and infectious diseases. However, a facility to produce clinical grade material under good manufacturin g practice was lacking. To this end, Huddinge University Hospital has taken the initiative to open a Gene Therapy Research Center in 1996. T his facility, which is unique of its kind in Scandinavia, is located i n the Novum Research Park, Huddinge, and is a part of the existing Cli nical Research Center. The newly built centre will allow clinicians an d researchers to develop and produce vectors (viral and nonviral) for clinical trials and do basic research to understand the mechanisms of diseases. Although the centre will primarily serve the academic instit utions it will also extend its facilities to other investigators in th is field. The production unit is run in collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine, University of Lund. On-going projects include production of plasmid vectors for prevention of postangioplasty restenosis, DNA vaccine for HIV-1, cationic liposome DNA complexes for cystic fibrosis and retroviral vectors for HIV-1.