Microfluidic Transduction Harnesses Mass Transport Principles to Enhance Gene Transfer Efficiency

Ex vivo gene therapy using lentiviral vectors (LVs) is a proven approach to treat and potentially cure many hematologic disorders and malignancies but remains stymied by cumbersome, cost-prohibitive, and scale-limited production processes that cannot meet the demands of current clinical protocols for widespread clinical utilization. However, limitations in LV manufacture coupled with inefficient transduction protocols requiring significant excess amounts of vector currently limit widespread implementation. Herein, we describe a microfluidic, mass transport-based approach that overcomes the diffusion limitations of current transduction platforms to enhance LV gene transfer kinetics and efficiency. This novel ex vivo LV transduction platform is flexible in design, easy to use, scalable, and compatible with standard cell transduction reagents and LV preparations. Using hematopoietic cell lines, primary human T cells, primary hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) of both murine (Sca-1(+)) and human (CD34(+)) origin, microfluidic transduction using clinically processed LVs occurs up to 5-fold faster and requires as little as one-twentieth of LV. As an in vivo validation of the microfluidic-based transduction technology, HSPC gene therapy was performed in hemophilia A mice using limiting amounts of LV. Compared to the standard static well-based transduction protocols, only animals transplanted with microfluidic-transduced cells displayed clotting levels restored to normal.