靶向HIV-1 vif的高效siRNA的筛选及慢病毒介导的体外抗病毒研究

Screening of Highly Effective siRNA Sequence Targeting to HIV-1 vif and the Lentiviral-mediated Antiviral Research in vitro

RNAi技术在艾滋病治疗研究中已展现出巨大的潜力,兼具高效抑制特性和保守性的siRNA靶位是其获得成功应用的重要基础。本研究选择以HIV-1 vif基因为靶区筛选高效保守的RNAi序列,共选择设计了30个识别不同位点的siRNA序列,以pSUPER为载体构建了相应的shRNA表达质粒。通过与pNL4-3质粒在293FT细胞中进行共转染抑制实验,以及对初筛获得的高效序列进行保守性分析显示siRNA-vif37序列具有高效抑制效率和较好的保守性特征。通过与pGL3-vif报告质粒的共转染实验证明siRNA-vif37具有vif基因抑制特异性。带有shRNA-vif37表达元件的重组慢病毒转导后的MT-4细胞在HIV-1NL4-3体外攻毒实验中可显示出较有效的抑制病毒复制的能力,本研究进一步对转导后细胞进行克隆化筛选,获得稳定整合shRNA-vif37表达元件的MT-4-vif37细胞克隆,该细胞具有显著的抑制病毒复制的能力,在高攻毒剂量下仍可获得良好的抑制效果。本研究为进一步应用RNAi技术进行新型艾滋病治疗方法研究提供了重要基础。

Discovery of the RNA interference （RNAi） pathway has led to exciting new strategies for developing HIV treatment. This study was to find out the highly effective and conserved siRNA target sequences for improving RNAi-based therapy against the HIV-1. We constructed 30 shRNA expression plasmids for expressing different siRNAs targeted to HIV-1 vif and co-transfected them with the pNL4-3 to score for its ability to inhibit the expression of p24 protein of HIV-1. Then, the highly effective siRNAs targeting sequences were selected to align with 625 HIV-1 sequences in database including all HIV-1 subtypes to analyze their conserved character. In addition, vif37 the highly effective and most conserved target sequence was confirmed of its sequence-specific inhibition by independent reporter assays. MT-4 cell transduced with lentiviral shRNA-vif37 vector could inhibit HIV-1NL4-3 replication in vitro. Moreover, MT-4-vif37 cloned from transduced MT-4 cell could stably express shRNA-vif37 and inhibit virus replication more efficiently when challenged with high titer virus. These results showed that RNAi has great potential as an antiviral gene therapy approach and supports the efforts to develop treatment for HIV-1-infected individuals.