(715e) Sticky Adeno-Associated Viral Vectors for Spatially Controlled Gene Delivery

Viral gene delivery is a powerful approach for tissue engineering applications. It can modulate cellular behaviors to grow specific tissues to replace those have damaged organs. In growing tissues, spatially controlled secretion of inductive factors is critical to elucidate a variety of biological mechanisms. It can control spatial distribution of extra cellular molecules on substrates and overcome limitations found in protein delivery such as systemic toxicity and short protein half-life. AAV is one of the safe and highly efficient viral vehicles for the delivery of therapeutic genes for tissue engineering applications. Hence, we developed spatially controlled AAV-mediated gene delivery system in order to intensively control the neurotropic factors, such as nerve growth factor (NGF). In this study, we developed patterned gene delivery system with adhesive materials, PEI-catechol which were used to modify surfaces of AAV viruses for sticky viruses. The negative surface charge of AAVr3.45 was successfully complexed with PEI-catechol which is often used to non-viral gene delivery as polycation polymers. Because of the adhesive characteristic of sticky virus (AAVr3.45/PEI-C) we were able to generate spatially controlled viral patterns on substrates by the simple "gene-vector drawing" technique without any additional steps. Therefore, this study developed a simple, cost effective and versatile platform for the spatially patterned gene expressions that can be utilized in the functional tissue organization. (ref: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 5598 –5601)