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Lysis of Dysplastic but not Normal Oral Keratinocytes and Tissue-Engineered Epithelia with Conditionally Replicating Adenoviruses

¹ Head and Neck Cancer Unit, King's College London, Guy's, King's and St. Thomas' Hospitals, and ² Centre for Molecular Oncology, Institute of Cancer and the Cancer Research United Kingdom Clinical Centre, Barts and The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry, London, United Kingdom; ³ Division of Human Gene Therapy, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama; and ⁴ Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, Garscube Estate, Bearsden, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Requests for reprints: Max Partridge, Head and Neck Cancer Unit, King's College London, Guy's, King's and St. Thomas' Hospitals, Guy's Tower, St. Thomas Street, London SE1 9RT, United Kingdom. Phone: 44-207-346-3474; Fax: 44-207-346-3753; E-mail: oralsurgery{at}partridgekcl.co.uk.

There is no effective medical treatment for oral precancer, and surgery to remove these lesions is imprecise because abnormal mucosa extends beyond the visible lesion. Development of vectors for tumor-selective viral replication has been a significant advance, and viral lysis is well suited to destruction of oral precancerous mucosa. To facilitate evaluation of new treatments, we engineered dysplastic oral epithelium using keratinocytes isolated from dysplastic lesions. We show that these model systems recapitulate the key characteristics of the clinical lesions closely, and that topical delivery of the conditionally replicating adenovirus (CRAd) dl922-947 can lyse tissue-engineered epithelia that show mild, moderate, or severe dysplasia, but normal oral epithelia are very resistant to this treatment. The lytic effect is determined by various factors, including the grade and proliferation index of the dysplastic epithelia. The presence of suprabasal cycling cells, expression of the coxsackie adenovirus receptor (CAR), the transcription cofactor p300, and other aberrations that affect the regulation of the cell cycle or apoptosis and promote viral replication may also be important. The ability of dl922-947 to destroy engineered oral dysplasia was significantly greater than that observed using wild-type adenovirus, d/1520, or viruses modified to bypass cell entry dependent on the presence of CAR. Evidence of infection in clinical dysplastic lesions was also shown ex vivo using tissue explants. We conclude that dl922-947 may provide an efficient molecular cytotoxic to dissolve oral dysplastic lesions. [Cancer Res 2007;67(15):7284–94]