Enhanced in vivo gene transfer into the placenta using RGD fiber-mutant adenovirus vector

Among viral vectors, the fiber-mutant adenovirus vector carrying the Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) peptide sequence (Ad-RGD) seems to have potential for both clinical gene therapy and basic research. As a part of a thorough evaluation of Ad-RGD in preclinical studies, we designed an experiment to investigate in detail the distribution of Ad-RGD compared with conventional adenovirus vector (WT-Ad) in pregnant mice. Surprisingly, Ad-RGD had substantial placental tropism, at 10–100 times that of WT-Ad. Transgene expression was sustained for at least 7 days, and Ad-RGD expressing firefly luciferase or red fluorescent protein has so far caused no placental dysfunction leading to fetal death. Ad-RGD showed high levels of transduction efficiency in in vitro-differentiated trophoblast stem cells, in which higher expression of αvβ3 integrin than in undifferentiated cells was observed. Our results suggest that the use of Ad-RGD or another RGD-mediated targeting strategy holds promise for drug delivery to the placenta.