Figure 4.

High-dose rAAV2/6 transduction increases luciferase expression in the neighboring tissues but not in the skin graft after intradermal vector injection. (a) In vivo imaging of luciferase expression after intradermal vector administration. Representative images show xenotransplanted mice (day 28) in groups injected intradermally with LV/CMV-FLuc (left, mice 1–4; same vector dose as in previous experiments), a saline-injected negative control mouse (left, mouse 5), or high-dose (HD) rAAV2/6-CMV-FLuc (right, mice 1–5; 5-fold increased vector dose compared with previous experiments). Overexposed images are shown on the right-hand side. (b) In vivo imaging of luciferase expression in the mice shown in (a) after graft removal. After the mice were killed, the human skin xenografts were excised and new imaging was performed on the dead mice without grafts. Overexposed images are shown on the right-hand side. (c) Ex vivo detection of luciferase activity in the central part of the human skin xenografts (4-mm punch biopsy) exposed to LV/CMV-FLuc (left, grafts 1–4), saline-injected negative control (left, graft 5), or HD rAAV2/6-CMV-FLuc (right, grafts 1–5). Depiction of the average radiance in central graft tissue ex vivo from the punch biopsies are shown on the right-hand side. Data are presented as means + SD. ***p < 0.01 (p = 0.0026). LV, lentiviral vector; rAAV, recombinant adeno-associated viral vectors; HD, high dose; p/sec/cm²/sr, photons per second per centimeter squared per steradian.