Custom Lentivirus Production

Lentivirus is a genus of retroviruses, which includes the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Lentiviruses offer many unique advantages over other conventional and viral gene-delivery systems. Principal among these is their ability to provide long-term and stable gene expression and to transduce both dividing and non-dividing cells, such as neurons, T cells, and even early-stage embryos. Compared to retroviruses, lentiviruses are less likely integrated into heterochromatin where transgenes are tightly packed and silenced by epigenetic mechanisms.

As with all retroviruses, lentiviruses have gag, pol and env genes, coding for viral proteins in the order: 5´-gag–pol–env-3´. Unlike other retroviruses, however, lentiviruses have two regulatory genes, tat and rev. The Long terminal repeat (LTR) is about 600 nt long, of which the U3 region is 450, the R sequence 100 and the U5 region some 70 nt long.

BiCell Scientific’s lentivirus production service provides customized lentivirus design and packaging services including lentiviral vector cloning, lentivirus generation, packaging and titration, target cell transduction and transgenic expression validation.