Successful Culture and Sustainability in Vivo of Gene-Modified Human Oral Mucosal Epithelium

Abstract

Human oral mucosal cells are an attractive site for tissue engineering because they are the most accessible cells in the body and easy to manipulate in vitro. They thus have possibilities for targeting by somatic gene therapy. We examined the efficiency of retrovirus-mediated gene transfer and the construction of mucosal epithelium in vivo. Human oral mucosal cells were transduced with a retroviral vector carrying the lacZ gene at high efficiency and constructed epithelium after G418 selection with 3T3 cells in vitro. The cultured oral mucosal epithelium membrane was then grafted onto immunodeficient mice. beta-Gal expression was detected histochemically in vivo 5 weeks after grafting. Furthermore, we transduced factor IX cDNA into the mucosal epithelium membrane, and it was then transplanted into nude mice. Between 0.6 and 1.8 ng of human factor IX per milliliter was found in mouse plasma, and the production was continued for 23 days in vivo. These results confirmed that the oral mucosal epithelium is an ideal target tissue for gene therapy or tissue engineering.