One of the most interesting recent developments in the applications of lentiviral vectors is their use for generating transgenic animals as an alternative method to standard DNA pronuclear injection.

The advantage of lentiviral vector mediated transgenesis is that it is simple and highly efficient, with an average of 67% of the animals carrying the provirus. Moreover, this approach has been rapidly applied to transgenesis, such as constitutive or controllable knock down using small hairpin RNA technology, which lowers the need for costly and time consuming knock out experiments.

In the platform, we have successfully used the method to carry out various studies such as transgene or promoter evaluation, as well as enhancer screening.

The platform provides an all-round service: starting from high quality production of lentiviral vectors, generation of transgenic mice using perivitelline injection of oocytes, to genotyping of animals allowing the delivery of only positive progenies. The complete procedure is extremely rapid, as it can be performed in around 10 weeks.

The core is located at EPFL, and consists of one P2 for lentiviral vector production and titration, one P2 for the injection and one animal housing room with a capacity of around 1000 mice, under high quality sanitary status.