Approaches for generating recombinant adenovirus vectors

Various methods have been developed to facilitate the generation of recombinant adenovirus vectors, and three commercially available methods have been most widely used: the homologous recombination method in E1-complement cell lines, the homologous recombination method in bacteria, and an in vitro ligation method based on simple routine plasmid construction. These methods can insert foreign genes not only into the E1 deletion region, but also into the E3 deletion region, thereby permitting the construction of a binary transgene expression system in which heterologous genes can be inserted into both the E1 and E3 regions. By modifying the latter two methods, fiber-mutant adenovirus vectors can be also constructed in order to modify vector tropism. In this paper, we review recent advances in the construction of first generation adenovirus vectors and fiber-modified adenovirus vectors.