The Vector Core was established in January 1991 by start-up funds provided by the Pittsburgh Transplant Institute, the Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, and the Pittsburgh Genetics Institute. The core was designed to function both as a service facility as well as a research and development facility.

The Vector Core was established as part of the gene therapy initiative at the University of Pittsburgh. In this capacity, the core has generated viral vectors and provided reagents to projects working on treatment of gene therapy for cancer, Gaucher disease, gene therapy for arthritis, gene transfer to facilitate islet transplantation, gene transfer to myoblasts, in utero gene transfer and gene transfer to hepatocytes and endothelial cells.

The Vector Core has also provided viruses expressing both marker and therapeutic genes to investigators to infect tumor cells, neuronal cells, hepatocytes, islets, synoviocytes, T-cells, NK cells, dendritic cells, and fibroblasts. The core has served as a hub for a number of gene therapy projects for the past fifteen years and thus is a fully functional core facility.

The core is working with two types of viral delivery systems, retrovirus and adenovirus, for transfer of therapeutic genes as well as to develop expression systems for delivery.