Recombinant adenoviruses have tremendous potential in both research and therapeutic applications.
They provide numerous advantages when introducing genetic material into host cells. The permissive
host cell range is very wide. Adenovirus has been used to infect many mammalian cell types (both
replicative and non-replicative) for high expression of the recombinant protein. Recombinant adenoviruses are especially useful for gene transfer and protein expression in cell lines that have low transfection efficiency with liposome. After entering cells, the virus remains epichromosomal (i.e. does not integrate into the host chromosome so does not activate or inactivate host genes). Recently, recombinant adenoviruses have been used to deliver RNAi into cells.
HEK 293 cells or their variants are used as host cells for viral amplification. Recombinant
adenoviruses can be grown at high titer, e.g. 10^10 VP (viral particles)/mL, which can be concentrated up to 10^13 VP/mL, and subsequently purified by ViraBind™ Adenoviral Purification Kit or traditional CsCl ultracentrifugation.