Modeling Adeno-Associated Viral Vector 6-mediated In Vivo Gene Delivery to Expanded Non-Mobilized Haemopoietic Stem Cells from Transfusion-dependent Thalassemia Patients in a Humanized Mouse

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) are important targets for gene modification therapies (GMT) as they originate several serious genetic conditions including the β-haemoglobinopathies. Potentially curative ex vivo GMT pose the barriers of accessibility, myeloablation-associated morbidity and prohibitive cost. In vivo GMT using non-integrating single-strand adeno-associated viral vectors (ssAAV) are a promising alternative that address these challenges directly, although the small ssAAV payload limits the capacity to package much larger gene or base editors. We investigated the feasibility of targeting human HSC in vivo with a dual-ssAAV6 strategy, which in future may be useful to deliver split-intein editing tools to overcome this limitation.

We engrafted NOD.Cg-Prkdcscid Il2rgtm1Wjl/SzJ humice with human hCD45 ⁺ CD34 ⁺ HSC from transfusion-dependent β-thalassemic patients to test in vivo targeting of hCD45 cells with ssAAV6, then administered 5E+12 genomes/kg of ssAAV6-GFP/ssAAV6-mCherry. Humice showed peak single-transgene expression (GFP ⁺ or mCh ⁺ ) of 1.96-10.17%, and dual-transgene expression (GFP ⁺ mCh ⁺ ) of 31.77% in circulating hCD45 ⁺ cells. Nested hCD45 ⁺ from liver, spleen and bone marrow showed single-and dual-transgene expression of 36.13-68.14% and 21.91-59.44% respectively. Secondary transplantation experiments demonstrated long-term persistence of AAV6-transduced hCD45 cells showing single-and dual-transgene expression of 9.19-60.72% and 7.15-9.19% respectively, with significant increase in expression from circulating cells. Minimal pro-inflammatory cytokine expression was observed following ssAAV6 administration in thalassemia humice compared with humice carrying non-thalassemia HSC.

Our model demonstrates the efficiency of in vivo ssAAV6-mediated targeting of thalassaemia HSC, potential long-term survivability of transduced cells, and feasibility of a dual-AAV strategy for gene editing, which offers a promising alternative to ex vivo GMT for β-haemoglobinopathies.