Coupled Effects of Polybrene and Calf Serum on the Efficiency of Retroviral Transduction and the Stability of Retroviral Vectors

Abstract

Overview summary The effects of physico-chemical factors such as the polycation Polybrene (PB) and calf serum (CS) on the efficiency of gene transfer are investigated. PB and CS exhibit a coupled action, because the effect of one strongly depends on the concentration of the other. Optimal concentrations exist for which the efficiency of retroviral transduction is maximized. Retroviral decay exhibits sigmoidal kinetics in the presence of PB, but exponential kinetics in the absence of PB from the viral supernatant, during the period of viral decay. These findings suggest that, in addition to virus–cell interactions that occur on the cell surface, physico-chemical processes may occur in solution that play an important role in retrovirus-mediated gene transfer.