FORGEN

RESEARCH NETWORK FOR FUNDAMENTAL GENETIC TECHNOLOGY

FORGEN II VV2 Generation of transgenic animals to evaluate the efficiency and safety of replication-competent, mammary tumor-specific ProCon vectors for gene therapy

Transgenic animals offer the possibility to study the level and tissue specificity of the expression of gene constructs in vivo. In the present project, we generate transgenic mice and rabbits by DNA-microinjection into pronuclei of zygotes, to evaluate in two different species the efficiency and safety of injected proviruses based on replication-competent ProCon vectors including mammary tumor-specific promoters and green fluorescent protein (GFP) reproter genes. For each vector, several independent strains are generated to exclude expression effects that are caused by the random integration of the injected vetors (position effects). These studies are inevitable before this new class of ProCon vectors can be used in clinical studies.