Our laboratory is devoted to facilitating the use of viral vector technology at St. Jude. We have significant expertise and experience with vectors based on the following viruses:
A portion of our laboratory efforts are devoted to assisting researchers in the production of viral vector preparations for use in research experiments in their laboratories. We accomplish this in several ways, the simplest of which is the provision of validated plasmid reagents which can be transfected into 293 or 293T cells for production of virus, or used for the insertion of genes to make new, transfectable plasmid vectors. A complete list of these plasmids is in the Resources section of this website, along with graphical maps and digital sequence files for each plasmid. For those investigators wishing to avoid the difficulty and effort associated with generating high-titer virus preparations, we also provide a custom vector production service. For retroviral vector supernatants, this service operates with a two-week, Wednesday to 2nd Wednesday turnaround. This service can also be useful when laboratories are experiencing low vector titer yields, as we are continually optimizing our reagents and procedures to maximize titer, and we can provide quantitative information for your vectors in comparison to our benchmarked standards.
Finally, the St. Jude Vector Laboratory can help transition a vector into clinical production in the GMP facility, in order to use that vector in a human gene therapy clinical trial. This process is labor intensive, and requires a thorough knowledge of FDA regulations and guidances for the production and use of biologicals.