Targeted Adenoviral Vectors I: Transductional Targeting

Human adenovirus (Ad) has been used extensively to develop gene transfer vectors for vaccine and gene therapy applications. A major factor limiting the efficacy of the current generation of Ad vectors is their inability to accomplish specific gene delivery to the cells of interest. Transductional targeting strategies seek to redirect virus binding to the appropriate cellular receptor to increase infection efficiency in selected cell types to achieve therapeutic intervention. These efforts mainly focused on incorporating targeting ligands by means of chemical conjugation or genetic modification of Ad capsid proteins and using bispecific adapter molecules to mediate virus recognition of target cells. This review summarizes current progress in Ad tropism modification maneuvers that embody genetic capsid modification and adapter-based approaches that have encouraging implications for further development of advanced vectors suitable for clinical translation.