Progressing from transient to stable packaging cell lines for continuous production of lentiviral and gammaretroviral vectors

Lentivirus and other retroviral vectors are useful tools to engineer chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells which are designed to target tumor cells in the growing field of gene therapy. Several efforts have been made to improve vector packaging systems including plasmid systems and envelopes and develop stable packaging cell lines (PCLs) in order to improve the productivity and safety by eliminating cytotoxicity of HIV-1 genes and unnecessary homologous genomic regions. In this paper, we explored stable PCLs developed to date for the production of both lentiviral and retroviral vectors and addressed key features of the viral vector production systems and how the features can be further utilized and modified to meet the growing demand in clinical trials.