Mentors:

Noriyuki Kasahara, Ph.D.
Lily Wu, M.D., Ph.D.

Research Interests:

The two main areas of my work are the molecular biology of retroviruses and the engineering of these viruses for use in therapeutic gene delivery. Murine leukemia virus and gibbon ape leukemia virus are simple mammalian retroviruses that can efficiently infect a wide variety of cell types and can be modified to stably transmit and express exogenous genes. I have taken advantage of these qualities to develop replicating vectors that show promise as agents for cancer gene therapy. The tropism of these vectors can be altered either by the introduction of heterologous envelope genes or by the replacement of the native transcriptional regulatory sequences with tissue-specific sequences. I am currently using optical imaging to study the in vivo spread of such tropism-modified replicating vectors containing fluorescent and bioluminescent transgenes.

Assistant Director of the Vector Core, UCLA JCCC
Adjunct Assistant Professor pending, Dept of Medicine, UCLA

Logg CR and Kasahara N. Retrovirus-mediated gene transfer to tumors, in Methods in Molecular Biology: Gene Delivery to Mammalian Cells (Heiser, WC, ed.). Humana Press, Totowa, NJ, pp. 499-525, 2004.

Tai CK, Logg CR, Park JM, Anderson WF, Press MF, Kasahara N. Antibody-mediated targeting of replication-competent retroviral vectors. Human Gene Therapy, 14:789-802, 2003.

Logg CR, Logg A, Matusik RJ, Bochner BH, and Kasahara N. Tissue-specific transcriptional targeting of a replication-competent retroviral vector. Journal of Virology, 76:12783-91, 2002.

Soifer H, Higo C, Logg CR, Jih L, Mitani K, and Kasahara N. A novel, helper-dependent, adenovirus-retrovirus hybrid vector: stable transduction by a two-stage mechanism. Molecular Therapy, 5:599-608, 2002.

Chang Z, Pan J, Logg C, Kasahara N, and Roy-Burman, P. A replication-competent feline leukemia virus subgroup A (FeLV-A) tagged with GFP reporter exhibits biological properties similar to the parental FeLV-A. Journal of Virology, 75:8837-41, 2001.

Logg CR, Tai CK, Logg A, Anderson WF, and Kasahara N. A uniquely stable replication-competent retrovirus vector achieves efficient gene delivery in vitro and in solid tumors in vivo. Human Gene Therapy, 12:921-32, 2001.

Logg CR, Logg A Tai CK, Cannon PM, and Kasahara N. Genomic stability and natural selection of murine leukemia viruses containing insertions at the env-3' UTR boundary. Journal of Virology, 75:6989-98, 2001.

Smith E, Redman R, Logg CR, Coetzee GA, Kasahara N, and Frenkel B. Glucocorticoids inhibit developmental stage-specific osteoblast cell cycle: dissociation of cyclin A/cdk2 from E2F4/p130 complexes. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 275:19992-20001, 2000.