Immune response to lentiviral bilirubin UDP-glucuronosyltransferase gene transfer in fetal and neonatal rats

Gene therapy for inherited disorders might cause an immune response to the therapeutic protein. A solution would be to introduce the gene in the fetal or neonatal period, which should lead to tolerization. Lentiviral vectors mediate long-term gene expression, and are well suited for gene therapy early in development. A model for fetal or neonatal gene therapy is the inherited disorder of bilirubin metabolism, Crigler-Najjar disease (CN). The absence of bilirubin UDP-glucoronyltransferase (UGT1A1) activity in CN patients causes high serum levels of unconjugated bilirubin and brain damage in infancy. CN is attractive for the development of gene therapy because the mutant Gunn rat closely mimics the human disease. Injection of UGT1A1 lentiviral vectors corrected the hyperbilirubinemia for more than a year in rats injected as fetuses and for up to 18 weeks in rats injected the day of birth. UGT1A1 gene transfer was confirmed by the presence of bilirubin glucuronides in bile. All animals injected with UGT1A1 lentiviral vectors developed antibodies to UGT1A1. Animals injected with green fluorescent protein (GFP) lentiviral vectors did not develop antibodies to GFP. Our results indicate that fetal and neonatal gene therapy with immunogenic proteins such as UGT1A1 does not necessarily lead to tolerization.