Lentivirus (LV) Starting Plasmids

Biomay offers a variety of ready-to-use starting plasmids for packaging of recombinant lentiviral vectors (rLV) as gene transfer vectors.

Lentiviral vectors derived from the human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) are well characterized and established gene delivery systems. Due to the large payload, they have become a widely used tool in cell and gene therapies for stable expression of therapeutic genes. In particular, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a common application of lentiviral vectors.

For packaging recombinant lentiviral vectors in HEK293 cell culture, a set of the following plasmids is required:

1. 1. 1. Envelope plasmid providing the envelope glycoprotein, which is typically derived from the vesicular stomatitis virus glycoprotein G (VSV-G) providing a broad tropism and allowing the virus to infect a wide range of cell types
      2. Packaging plasmids containing genes coding for structural proteins (gag), functional enzymes (pol) and expression regulators (rev)
      3. Transgene plasmid containing the gene of interest flanked by long terminal repeat (LTR) sequences, which facilitate the integration of the transgene sequence into the host genome

Transgene plasmids with the individual genes of interest are usually custom made. The lentiviral envelope plasmid and the packaging plasmids, however, are generic and universally applicable.

Biomay provides a full set of lentiviral plasmids (envelope, packaging and reporter plasmids). The plasmids are compatible with the 3^rd generation packaging system (four-plasmid-system) which is widely utilized in clinical applications due to its proven biosafety.