Yan Shou

In vivo selection of hematopoietic progenitor cells and temozolomide dose intensification in rhesus macaques through lentiviral transduction with a drug resistance gene

Major limitations to gene therapy using HSCs are low gene transfer efficiency and the inability of most therapeutic genes to confer a selective advantage on the gene-corrected cells. One approach to enrich for gene-modified cells in vivo is to include in the retroviral vector a drug resistance gene, such as the P140K mutant of the DNA repair enzyme O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT*). We transplanted 5 rhesus macaques with CD34+ cells transduced with lentiviral vectors encoding MGMT* and a fluorescent marker, with or without homeobox B4 (HOXB4), a potent stem cell self-renewal gene. Transgene expression and common integration sites in lymphoid and myeloid lineages several months after transplantation confirmed transduction of long-term repopulating HSCs. However, all animals showed only a transient increase in gene-marked lymphoid and myeloid cells after O6-benzylguanine (BG) and temozolomide (TMZ) administration. In 1 animal, cells transduced with MGMT* lentiviral vectors were protected and expanded after multiple courses of BG/TMZ, providing a substantial increase in the maximum tolerated dose of TMZ. Additional cycles of chemotherapy using 1,3-bis-(2-chloroethyl)-1-nitrosourea (BCNU) resulted in similar increases in gene marking levels, but caused high levels of nonhematopoietic toxicity. Inclusion of HOXB4 in the MGMT* vectors resulted in no substantial increase in gene marking or HSC amplification after chemotherapy treatment. Our data therefore suggest that lentivirally mediated gene transfer in transplanted HSCs can provide in vivo chemoprotection of progenitor cells, although selection of long-term repopulating HSCs was not seen.

Hemgn is a direct transcriptional target of HOXB4 and induces expansion of murine myeloid progenitor cells

HOXB4, a member of the Homeobox transcription factor family, promotes expansion of hematopoietic stem cells and hematopoietic progenitor cells in vivo and ex vivo when overexpressed. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this effect are not well understood. To identify direct target genes of HOXB4 in primary murine hematopoietic progenitor cells, we induced HOXB4 function in lineage-negative murine bone marrow cells, using a tamoxifen-inducible HOXB4-ER(T2) fusion protein. Using expression microarrays, 77 probe sets were identified with differentially changed expression in early response to HOXB4 induction. Among them, we show that Hemogen (Hemgn), encoding a hematopoietic-specific nuclear protein of unknown function, is a direct transcriptional target of HOXB4. We show that HOXB4 binds to the promoter region of Hemgn both ex vivo and in vivo. When we overexpressed Hemgn in bone marrow cells, we observed that Hemgn promoted cellular expansion in liquid cultures and increased self-renewal of myeloid colony-forming units in culture, partially recapitulating the effect of HOXB4 overexpression. Furthermore, down-regulation of Hemgn using an shRNA strategy proved that Hemgn contributes to HOXB4-mediated expansion in our myeloid progenitor assays. Our results identify a functionally relevant, direct transcriptional target of HOXB4 and identify other target genes that may also participate in the HOXB4 genetic network.