13.0 Preliminary Data 
I. T Cell Dependence and Specificity 
In previous studies, we and others have documented the 
effectiveness of the Rev M10 gene as a dominant negative 
inhibitor of productive HIV replication (15,16,20). We have also 
shown that expression of Rev M10 in chronically infected T 
leukemia lines leads to protection against HIV infection without 
altering immune function (16). Although protection can be 
overcome with high titers of virus, several orders of magnitude 
of protection can be conferred, similar to antiviral agents which 
are already in clinical practice. This experiment has now been 
performed with 10 independently derived Rev M10 cell lines using 
retroviral vectors (16, see also below), and by electroporation 
with Rev M10 linked to different enhancer sequences (see below) . 
To determine whether expression of Rev M10 could provide 
resistance to HIV infection in human peripheral blood 
lymphocytes, we utilized a retroviral vector containing a G418 
resistance gene. When cells were transduced with this retroviral 
vector and selected for 8 days or more prior to HIV infection in 
vitro, the cells which expressed Rev M10 showed a marked degree 
of protection from retroviral infection compared to the identical 
vector which contained a mutation that did not allow the protein 
product of Rev M10 to be made (ARev M10) . These data document 
that expression of Rev M10 in human peripheral blood lymphocytes 
confers protection against HIV infection in vitro. This 
protection is found both with a cloned viral isolate, as well as 
with a freshly passaged clinical isolate in vitro. A 
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Recombinant DNA Research, Volume 18 
