High-fives for FIV?

Abstract

Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is a widespread lentivirus that causes an AIDS-like illness in cats but does not appear to infect humans, even after frequent cat bites. Poeschla et al.[ 1 Poeschla E.M. Wong-Staal F. Looney D.J. Efficient transduction of nondividing human cells by feline immunodeficiency virus lentiviral vectors. Nat. Med. 1998; 4: 354-357 Crossref PubMed Scopus (359) Google Scholar ]have recently reported experiments in which the FIV 5′ long terminal repeat (LTR) U3 element was replaced by the human cytomegalovirus (CMV) immediate-early gene promoter, allowing productive FIV replication in human cells. They then used these CMV promoter–FIV vectors pseudotyped with vesicular stomatitis virus glycoprotein G (VSV-G) to transduce human cells, including nondividing cells. These results delineate a basis for species barriers to lentiviral transduction: i.e. until now, human cells were not infected because of ineffective FIV U3 promoter activity and a lack of receptors for FIV. This work suggests that appropriately engineered FIV might become an effective and potentially safe vector useful in human gene therapy.