Adenoviral Vector as a Gene Delivery System into Cultured Rat Neuronal and Glial Cells

Previous studies have demonstrated that a defective recombinant adenovirus can infect a wide range of postmitotic and slowly proliferating cell types such as hepatocytes, myotubes, pneumocytes and intestinal cells (Stratford‐Perricaudet et al., Hum. Gene Ther., 1, 241–256, 1990; Quantin et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 89, 2581–2584, 1992; Jaffe et al., Nature Genetics, 1, 372–378, 1992). We have used a defective recombinant adenovirus, Ad.RSVβgal, containing the Escherichia coliβ‐galactosidase gene targeted to the nucleus under the transcriptional control of the Rous sarcoma virus long terminal repeat promoter (Stratford‐Perricaudet et al., J. Clin. Invest., 90, 626–630, 1992) to infect non‐dividing neural cells in primary culture. We show that 80–100% of neuronal and astroglial cells infected with a viral titre lower than 10⁹ p.f.u./ml express β‐galactosidase for at least 1 month without cell damage. These results demonstrate the potential usefulness of recombinant adenovirus infection for the analysis of brain‐specific gene regulation and for the transfer of genes into neural cells before their transplantation into the brain.