Drug – bio-affecting and body treating compositions – Designated organic active ingredient containing – Carbohydrate doai
Reexamination Certificate
2000-12-22
2004-04-20
Nguyen, Dave T. (Department: 1632)
Drug, bio-affecting and body treating compositions
Designated organic active ingredient containing
Carbohydrate doai
C435S320100, C435S325000, C435S455000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06723708
ABSTRACT:
The present invention relates to the use of lithium (Li
+
) for the preparation of a composition for improving transfection or transduction of a polynucleotide into a cell. Such a composition is useful in gene therapy, vaccination, and any therapeutic or prophylactic situation in which a gene-based product is administered to cells in vivo.
Gene therapy has generally been conceived as principally applicable to heritable deficiency diseases (cystic fibrosis, dystrophies, haemophilias, etc.) where permanent cure may be effected by introducing a functional gene. However, a much larger group of diseases, notably acquired diseases (cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, etc.) might be treatable by transiently engineering host cells to produce beneficial proteins.
Applications are, for example, the treatment of muscular dystrophies or of cystic fibrosis. The genes of Duchenne/Becker muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis have been identified and encode polypeptides termed dystrophin and cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR), respectively. Direct expression of these genes within, respectively, the muscle or lung cells of patients should contribute to a significant amelioration of the symptoms by expression of the functional polypeptide in targeted tissues. Moreover, in cystic fibrosis studies have suggested that one would need to achieve expression of the CFTR gene product in only about 5% of lung epithelial cells in order to significantly improve the pulmonary symptoms.
Another application of gene therapy is vaccination. In this regard, the immunogenic product encoded by the polynucleotide introduced in cells of a vertebrate may be expressed and secreted or be presented by said cells in the context of the major histocompatibility antigens, thereby eliciting an immune response against the expressed immunogen. Functional polynucleotides can be introduced into cells by a variety of techniques resulting in either transient expression of the gene of interest, referred to as transient transfection when said polynucleotide consists in plasmid derived polynucleotide, transduction when said polynucleotide consists in a viral derived polynucleotide, or permanent transformation of the host cells resulting from incorporation of the polynucleotide into the host genome.
Successful gene therapy depends on the efficient delivery to and expression of genetic information within the cells of a living organism. Most delivery mechanisms used to date involve viral vectors, especially adeno- and retroviral vectors. Viruses have developed diverse and highly sophisticated mechanisms to achieve this goal including crossing of the cellular membrane, escape from lysosomal degradation, delivery of their genome to the nucleus and, consequently, have been used in many gene delivery applications in vaccination or gene therapy applied to humans.
Besides, non-viral delivery systems have been developed which are based on receptor-mediated mechanisms (Perales et al., Eur. J. Biochem. 226 (1994), 255-266; Wagner et al., Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews 14 (1994), 113-135), on polymer-mediated transfection such as polyamidoamine (Haensler and Szoka, Bioconjugate Chem. 4 (1993), 372-379), dendritic polymer (WO 95/24221), polyethylene imine or polypropylene imine (WO 96/02655), polylysine (U.S. Pat. No. 5,595,897 or FR 2 719 316) or on lipid-mediated transfection (Felgner et al., Nature 337 (1989), 387-388) such as DOTMA (Felgner et al., Proc. NatI. Acad. Sci. USA 84 (1987), 7413-7417), DOGS or Transfectam™ (Behr et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 86 (1989), 6982-6986), DMRIE or DORIE (Felgner et al., Methods 5 (1993), 67-75), DC-CHOL (Gao and Huang, BBRC 179 (1991), 280-285), DOTAPTM (McLachlan et al., Gene Therapy 2 (1995), 674-622) or Lipofectamine™. These systems present potential advantages with respect to large-scale production, safety, targeting of transfectable cells, low immunogenicity and the capacity to deliver large fragments of DNA. Nevertheless their efficiency in vivo is still limited.
Finally, in 1990, Wolff et al. (Science 247 (1990), 1465-1468) have shown that injection of naked RNA or DNA, i.e. without a special delivery system, directly into mouse skeletal muscle results in expression of reporter genes within the muscle cells. This technique for transfecting cells offers the advantage of simplicity and experiments have been conducted that support the usefulness of this system for the delivery to the lung (Tsan et al., Am. J. Physiol. 268 (1995), L1052-L1056; Meyer et al., Gene Therapy 2 (1995), 450-460), brain (Schwartz et al., Gene Therapy 3 (1996), 405-411) joints (Evans and Roddins, Gene therapy for arthritis; In Wolff (ed) Gene therapeutics: Methods and Applications of direct Gene Transfer. Birkhaiser. Boston (1990), 320-343), thyroid (Sikes et al., Human Gen. Ther. 5 (1994), 837-844), skin (Raz et al., Proc. NatI. Acad. Sci. USA 91 (1994), 9519-9523) and liver (Hickman et al., Hum. Gene Ther. 5 (1994), 1477-1483). Nevertheless, Davis et al. (Human Gene Therapy 4 (1993), 151-159 and Human Mol. Genet. 4 (1993), 733-740) observed a large variability of expression of naked DNA injected into skeletal muscle in vivo which would be insufficient for the treatment of primary myopathies, for example. The authors propose solutions in order to obtain an improvement of the efficiency of gene transfer by preinjecting muscles with a relatively large volume of hypertonic sucrose or with toxins, for example cardiotoxin isolated from snake, in order to stimulate regeneration of muscles. Nevertheless, these methods, although promising, would not be applicable for human treatment.
Thus, the available delivery methods are not satisfactory in terms of safety or efficiency for their implementation in in vivo gene therapy.
Therefore, the technical problem underlying the present invention is the provision of improved methods and means for the delivery of nucleic acid molecules, either naked or combined with special delivery facilitating agents such as cationic lipid, polymer, or viral protein, in gene therapy.
This technical problem is solved by the provision of the embodiments as defined in the claims.
Thus, the present invention relates to the use of lithium (Li
+
) for the preparation of a composition for transferring a polynucleotide into a cell. It was surprisingly found that the specific addition of lithium when transferring a polynucleotide into vertebrate cells, and in particular into vertebrate tissue, leads to a dramatic improvement of the transfer efficiency. Thus, the present invention preferably relates to the use of lithium (Li
+
) for the preparation of a pharmaceutical composition for an improved transfer of a polynucleotide into a cell.
The term “polynucleotide” within the present invention is intended to designate both naked and non-naked nucleic acid. A “nucleic acid” may be a DNA or RNA, single or double stranded, linear or circular, natural or synthetic, modified or not (see U.S. Pat. No. 5,525,711, U.S. Pat. No. 4,711,955 or EP-A 302 175 for modification examples). It may be, inter alia, a genomic DNA, a genomic RNA, a cDNA, an mRNA, an antisense RNA, a ribosomal RNA, a ribozyme, a transfer RNA or DNA encoding such RNAs. The nucleic acid may be in the form of a plasmid or linear nucleic acid which contains at least one expressible sequence that can generate a polypeptide, a ribozyme, an antisense RNA or another molecule of interest upon delivery to a cell. The nucleic acid can also be an oligonucleotide (i.e. a nucleic acid having a short size of less than 100 bp) which is to be delivered to the cell, e.g., for antisense or ribozyme functions. According to the invention, said nucleic acid can be either naked or non-naked. “Naked” means that said nucleic acid, irrespective of its nature (DNA or RNA), its size, its form (single/double stranded, circular/linear, . . . ), is defined as being free from association with transfection-facilitating viral particles, liposomal formulations, charged lipids or polymers and precipitating agent (Wolff et al., Science 247 (1990), 1465-14
Burns Doane Swecker & Mathis L.L.P.
Nguyen Dave T.
Transgene S.A.
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