Abstract
Following gene therapy of SCID-X1 using murine leukemia virus (MLV) derived vector, two patients developed leukemia owing to an activating vector integration near the LMO2 gene. We found that these integrations reside within FRA11E, a common fragile site known to correlate with chromosomal breakpoints in tumors. Further analysis showed that fragile sites attract a nonrandom number of MLV integrations, shedding light on its integration mechanism and risk-to-benefit ratio in gene therapy.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Professor Norman Grover for his assistance in the statistical analyses, Dr Nicoletta Archidiacono for providing centromere 11 FISH probe and Professor Steve Scherer for providing chromosome 11 BAC clones.
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Supplementary Information accompanies the paper on Gene Therapy website (http://www.nature.com/gt)
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Bester, A., Schwartz, M., Schmidt, M. et al. Fragile sites are preferential targets for integrations of MLV vectors in gene therapy. Gene Ther 13, 1057–1059 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.gt.3302752
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.gt.3302752
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