Transplacental drug delivery: gene and virus delivery to the trophoblast

The development of successful strategies for delivering genes to the placen ta may provide new opportunities for modifying trophoblast function in orde r to learn more about trophoblast physiology and to offer novel therapeutic options for complications of pregnancy that result from placental dysfunct ion. Replication-deficient recombinant viral vectors are useful vehicles fo r introducing genes into cells in vitro and in vivo. Recombinant adenovirus and herpes simplex virus vectors are unable to efficiently infect and tran sduce terminally differentiated trophoblastic cells. However, recombinant a denoassociated virus vectors transduce terminally differentiated trophoblas tic cells, and a Sindbis virus construct efficiently transduces and destroy s trophoblastic cancer cells. We describe the features that make particular viral vectors attractive for gene transfer to trophoblastic cells. (C) 199 9 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.