Introduction for “Safety Considerations for Retroviral Vectors: A Short Review”

Retroviral vectors are becoming standard tools in cell biology as well as potential therapeutic agents for human disease. Many investigators have come to believe that retroviral vectors are safe, but both current biosafety guidelines and distributors of vectors recommend using the vectors under Biosafety level-2 (BSL-2) containment, with certain experiments requiring BSL-3 practices. This short review considers the dangers posed by the large variety of retroviral vectors and gives the rationale for safety evaluation.