A Nontoxic Transduction Enhancer Enables Highly Efficient Lentiviral Transduction of Primary Murine T Cells and Hematopoietic Stem Cells

Lentiviral vectors have emerged as an efficient, safe therapeutic tool for gene therapy based on hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) or T cells. However, the monitoring of transduced cells in preclinical models remains challenging because of the inefficient transduction of murine primary T cells with lentiviral vectors, in contrast to gammaretroviral vectors. The use of this later in preclinical proof of concept is not considered as relevant when a lentiviral vector will be used in a clinical trial. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop an efficient transduction protocol for murine cells with lentiviral vectors. Here, we describe an optimized protocol in which a nontoxic transduction enhancer (Lentiboost) enables the efficient transduction of primary murine T cells with lentiviral vectors. The optimized protocol combines low toxicity and high transduction efficiency. We achieved a high-level transduction of murine CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T cells with a VSV-G-pseudotyped lentiviral vector with no changes in the phenotypes of transduced T cells, which were stable and long-lived in culture. This enhancer also increased the transduction of murine HSCs. Hence, use of this new transduction enhancer overcomes the limitations of lentiviral vectors in preclinical experiments and should facilitate the translation of strategies based on lentiviral vectors from the bench to the clinic.