HIV gene therapy using RNA virus systems.

: We designed a vector to produce single-stranded DNA (ssDNA). We used HIV-1 reverse transcription for the purpose of constructing a DNAzyme expression vector against the HIV-1 env V3 loop. Initiation of HIV-1 reverse transcription requires the formation of a complex containing the viral RNA, tRNALys and reverse transcriptase. The expression vector contains the HIV-1 primer binding site (PBS) and tRNALys at the 3' end of its RNA transcript, thus enabling to an ssDNA would be synthesized by HIV-1 reverse transcriptase. We have demonstrated that the DNAzyme expressed by the lentiviral vectors suppressed HIV-1 replication in SupT1 cells.