Lipofectamine and related cationic lipids strongly improve adenoviral infection efficiency of primitive human hematopoietic cells

Adenoviral vectors have the potential to infect a large number of cell types including quiescent cells. Their use in hematopoietic cells is limited by the episomal form of their DNA, leading to transgene loss in the progeny cells. However, the use of this vector may be interesting for short-term in vitro modifications of primitive human hematopoietic cells. Therefore, we have investigated the ability of adenovirus to transduce cord blood CD34(+) cells. Several promoters were tested using the lacZ reporter gene. The PGK and CMV promoters induced transgene expression in 18-25% of the cells, whereas the HTLV-I and especially the RSV promoter were almost inactive. To improve infection efficiency, adenovirus was complexed with cationic lipids. Lipofectamine, Cellfectin, and RPR120535b, but not Lipofectin, Lipofectace, or DOTAP, markedly improved transgene expression in CD34(+) cells (from 19 to 35%). Lipofectamine strongly enhanced infection efficiency of the poorly infectable primitive CD34(+)CD38(low) cells (from 11 to 28%) whereas the more mature CD34(+)CD38(+) cells were only slightly affected (from 24 to 31%). Lipofectamine tripled the infection of CFU-GMs and LTC-ICs derived from the CD34(+)CD38(low) cell fraction (from 4 to 12% and from 5 to 16%, respectively) and doubled that of BFU-Es (from 13 to 26%). We conclude that cationic lipids can markedly increase the efficiency of adenovirus-mediated gene transfer into primitive hematopoietic cells.