Target Tissue of Choice for Gen-Delivery System
Both in ex vivo and in vivo approaches, there wilI be a target tissue in the body, where either the cells transfected in culture, will be transferred, or the vector carrying the therapeutic gene will be targeted, either for integration in the DNA of target cells (retrovirus) or for transient expression (adenovirus). Following are some of the target tissues.
Bone marrow
Bone marrow is a hematopoietic system, which is a suitable target for gene therapy, since well developed procedures for bone-marrow transplantation are available. The pluripotent hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) constitute .01 to 0.1 % of human bone marrow cells which are therefore, considered as an ideal target tissue. Gene transfer to HSC is also considered to be the best example of ex vivo gene therapy, and transduction of even few HSCs is sufficient to give enough transduced cells by multiplication.




