Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, alongside stroke. Adenoviral vectors - engineered non-replicative forms of adenovirus – are the most frequent delivery vehicles employed in clinical gene therapy trials to treat the disease. But there are drawbacks to the vector used: It is based on common adenovirus 5, which many people are already immune to, leading to rejection and inflammation upon administration.

Rare forms of adenoviruses therefore hold potential as alternatives in this treatment, but to implement them effectively we first need to understand how they get into cells.

Different forms use different cellular receptors to bind host cells. My research therefore focused on identifying the receptors for one such rare adenovirus: I treated cells expressing certain receptors with a GFP- or luciferase-recombinant version of it, measuring emitted fluorescence or bioluminescence if the virus was internalised. The results can lead to developing novel targeting strategies in gene therapy.