Liver directed adeno-associated viral vectors to treat metabolic disease

The liver is the metabolic center of the body and an ideal target for gene therapy of inherited metabolic disorders (IMDs). Adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors can deliver transgenes to the liver with high efficiency and specificity and a favorable safety profile. Recombinant AAV vectors contain only the transgene cassette, and their payload is converted to non-integrating circular double-stranded DNA episomes, which can provide stable expression from months to years. Insights from cellular studies and preclinical animal models have provided valuable information about AAV capsid serotypes with a high liver tropism. These vectors have been applied successfully in the clinic, particularly in trials for hemophilia, resulting in the first approved liver-directed gene therapy. Lessons from ongoing clinical trials have identified key factors affecting efficacy and safety that were not readily apparent in animal models. Circumventing pre-existing neutralizing antibodies to the AAV capsid, and mitigating adaptive immune responses to transduced cells are critical to achieving therapeutic benefit. Combining the high efficiency of AAV delivery with genome editing is a promising path to achieve more precise control of gene expression. The primary safety concern for liver gene therapy with AAV continues to be the small risk of tumorigenesis from rare vector integrations. Hepatotoxicity is a key consideration in the safety of neuromuscular gene therapies which are applied at substantially higher doses. The current knowledge base and toolkit for AAV is well developed, and poised to correct some of the most severe IMDs with liver-directed gene therapy.