Use of the rabbit ear artery to serially assess foreign protein secretion after site-specific arterial gene transfer in vivo. Evidence that anatomic identification of successful gene transfer may underestimate the potential magnitude of transgene expression.

Abstract

These experiments demonstrate a useful method of performing serial in vivo analyses of gene expression after vascular transfection and that anatomic analyses of transfection efficiency may underestimate the potential magnitude of expression in the case of a secreted gene product. These findings have implications for the clinical application of somatic gene therapy because low-efficiency transfection with a gene encoding for a secreted protein may achieve therapeutic effects not realized by transfection with genes encoding for proteins that remain intracellular.