Interaction of Fibronectin with Viruses

Fibronectin interacts via its Hep-2 domain with envelope glycoproteins on certain retroviruses and facilitates their entry into cells. The mechanism of this effect is apparently simple; fibronectin, by virtue of its ability to bind both the virus and cell-surface receptors, serves as a bridge and is able to concentrate viruses on the surface of the cells, thereby enhancing uptake. This property has been exploited in gene transfer protocols, whereby Fn or any of its fragments that contain both heparin and integrin binding sites improve the efficientcy of retroviral transduction of hematopoietic progenitor cells, having potential implications for gene therapy [ref].