Lab Website: https://sinn.lab.uiowa.edu/

The unifying goal of the Sinn Lab is to explore mechanisms of viral entry in the lungs for disease prevention or gene therapy applications.

Measles Virus. MV infected airway cells form infectious centers that retain individual nuclei, plasma membranes, and transepithelial resistance. One of the critical challenges for the field of cell-to-cell transmission is a model system that mirrors how viruses actually spread in living organisms. Primary airway cells are the best model for studying cell-to-cell transmission of MV in epithelia. Our 2015 and 2016 manuscripts demonstrate that MV traverses directly cell-to-cell between epithelial cells or between immune and airway cells. Current projects focus on demonstrating that formation of MV ribonucleoproteins are sufficient for lateral cell-to-cell spread in well-differentiated airway epithelial cells.

Novel integrating gene therapy vectors. We have shown the potential for using viral vectors (both Ad and AAV) to deliver piggyBac components to cells and achieve transposase mediated genomic integration of the transposon. A hybrid piggyBac/viral vector has the combined advantage of a very efficient gene transfer reagent with life-long expression. This novel hybrid vector system provides a valuable additional tool for in vivo gene transfer. These novel gene delivery tools are alternative integrating vector systems for the purpose of correction genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis (CF) or hemophilia. Current projects focus on demonstrating the efficacy of these vectors in persistently correcting the phenotypes in CF pig airways in vivo.



PubMed link

Department/Program Affiliations:
Microbiology and Immunology
Pediatrics