Expression Changes in Tolerant Murine Cardiac Allografts After Gene Therapy With a Lentiviral Vector Expressing α1,3 Galactosyltransferase

Abstract

Comparison of intragraft gene expression changes in tolerant cardiac allograft models may provide the basis for identifying pathways involved in graft survival. Our laboratory has previously demonstrated that tolerance to the gal α1,3 gal epitope, the major target of rejection of wild-type pig hearts in human cardiac transplantation, can be achieved after transplantation with bone marrow transduced with a lentiviral vector expressing α1,3 galactosyltransferase. We now present intracardiac gene expression changes associated with long-term tolerance in this model. Biotin-labeled cRNA was hybridized to Affymetrix GeneChip 430 2.0 Mouse Genome Arrays. Data were subjected to functional annotation analysis to identify genes of known function in which expression was increased or decreased by at least 2-fold (t-test, P