A convenient plasmid system for construction of helper‐dependent adenoviral vectors and its application for analysis of the breast‐cancer‐specific mammaglobin promoter

BACKGROUND: Helper-dependent (HD) adenovirus (Ad) vectors, deleted of all viral coding sequences, have a higher cloning capacity, improved performance of tissue-specific promoters, and reduced toxicity in animals relative to first-generation Ad vectors, making these vectors promising tools for gene transfer in vitro and in vivo. However, the large size of HDAd precursor plasmids renders them relatively difficult to manipulate due to the paucity …