Production of first generation adenovirus vectors: a review

In the past decade, adenovirus vectors have generated tremendous interest, especially in gene therapy applications. In the so-called 'first generation ' adenovirus vectors, the transgenes are inserted in place of the El region , or less often the E3 region. Although second-generation and helper-depend ent adenovirus vectors will probably prevail in the future in applications that require long-term gene expression, first generation adenovirus vectors will remain very useful in other settings, such as cancer and vaccination, or simply to transfect cell lines that are refractory to other transfectio n methods. Until a few years ago, the construction of first generation aden ovirus vectors was a labor-intensive and timeconsuming process. More than 2 0 methods have appeared that facilitate their construction and are reviewed below.