The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 17, 2002
Filed:
Jan. 14, 2000
Viromed Limited, Seoul, KR;
Abstract
The present invention relates to improved retroviral vectors for gene therapy. In this invention, retroviral vectors with higher safety and efficiency are constructed from MLV-based starting vectors, MON and MIN. The improved vectors have the following features: 1) sequences corresponding to MLV-derived pol gene are completely deleted in the vectors, avoiding homologous recombination which has been a baffling problem in conventional retroviral vectors, 2) a heterologous intron, splicing acceptor and/or non-coding sequence are/is inserted into the upstream position of a cloning site, maximizing the expression of a foreign gene through efficient splicing, 3) the vectors contain either the full-length U3 sequence of 5′ LTR or a strong heterologous promoter instead, permitting the abundant production of RNA, 4) either IRES (Internal Ribosomal Entry Site) or internal SV40 minimal promoter is inserted into the downstream position of cloning site, enabling the simultaneous expression of two or more foreign genes. Since the improved retroviral vectors of this invention turn out to be safe and to express the foreign gene efficiently, they are useful for gene therapy and the like.