Immune Responses to Adeno Associated Virus Vectors in Canine Muscle Using MRI for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

Donghoon Lee¹, Martin Kushmerick¹, Zejing Wang², Stephen Tapscott²

One challenge of gene therapy, a promising treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, is to understand immune responses to adeno associated virus (AAV) vectors used for gene delivery. Canine MR imaging was conducted to noninvasively monitor local inflammatory responses to AAV in dog muscle over time by measuring T2 values and volumes of the inflammatory areas. The volume increase of 33 ~ 150 % was monitored on semitendinosus muscle and the median T2 value was significantly higher at the sites of AAV injection (60.1 5.4 ms) than those from the un-injected muscles (33.6 0.5 ms) in the contra-lateral muscle.