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lentivirus

American  
[len-tuh-vahy-ruhs] / ˈlɛn təˌvaɪ rəs /

noun

lentiviruses plural
  1. any slow virus of the genus Lentivirus, of the retrovirus family, causing brain disease in sheep and other animals.


lentivirus British  
/ ˈlɛntɪˌvaɪrəs /

noun

  1. any of a group of slowly acting viruses that includes the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

Etymology

Origin of lentivirus

lenti(cular) + virus

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

In 2025 my company, Umoja Biopharma, treated leukemia and lymphoma patients using an in vivo lentivirus.

From The Wall Street Journal Jan. 1, 2026

The researchers randomly disrupted genes by developing a method to introduce a collection of genetic tools in lentivirus into testicular cells in testes at high efficiency.

From Science Daily Mar. 5, 2024

It was this type of treatment, as part of the largest lentivirus ongoing gene therapy trial led by Bluebird Bio, that effectively arrested Colón’s sickle cell condition.

From Scientific American Jul. 17, 2021

Like Bluebird Bio’s investigators, Williams and his colleagues are using a disabled lentivirus to deliver a gene to sickle cell patients.

From Seattle Times Mar. 10, 2021

He also engineered a lentivirus to express mutated versions of the spike protein and found that the deletion alone made that virus twice as infectious.

From Science Magazine Dec. 20, 2020

But lentiviruses only express spike, not SARS-CoV-2’s other three structural proteins.

From Science Magazine Nov. 3, 2021

And some, such as lentiviruses, tend to insert themselves into coding regions, the parts of the genome that get translated into proteins.

From Scientific American Oct. 19, 2021

Those side effects led scientists to switch to lentiviruses, a subset of retroviruses that includes HIV.

From Science Magazine Aug. 11, 2021

Lentiviruses have had a strong track record in gene therapy, despite a recent scare: In February, bluebird bio halted two sickle cell gene therapy trials, which also use lentiviruses, after a participant developed MDS.

From Science Magazine Aug. 11, 2021

The possibility that lentiviruses might not be safe was of grave concern.

From Seattle Times Mar. 10, 2021

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