7.1.1.2 The use of retrovirus for gene therapy

Retroviruses have several advantages for introducing genes into human cells.  Among these are:

-   The envelope protein enables the virus to infect human cells.

-  RNA copies of the human gene can be incorporated into the retroviral genome.

To use retrovirus, as a vehicle for gene therapy requires the removal of all the genes: gag, pol and env regions, and then replaced by the gene of interest.  This means that the virus loses its ability to replicate but still has the capability of integration to the target cell genome. However, its limitation lies in that they only infect replicating cells. This could be an advantage for certain types of cancer therapies. Retroviruses are used for gene therapy in a number of diseases and acquire diseases such as HIV/ AIDS (Poeschla, 1996,Marcel and Grausz, 1997).