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Departments of Pharmacology 1 [Y. N., M. N.] and Nature Medicine [E. N., H. N., S. Y.], Nagasaki University School of Medicine, Nagasaki 852-8523, and Department of Internal Medicine 4, Saitama Medical College, Saitama, 350-0495 [M. I.], Japan
| ABSTRACT |
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510-fold higher than that with the TG promoter alone. Enhanced tumor growth inhibition was also observed in in vivotumor models. These data indicate the usefulness of the Cre-loxP system to enhance the activity of a tissue (or tumor)-specific promoter in transcriptionally targeted cancer gene therapy. | Introduction |
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1% of all cancers (1)
. We have recently focused our interest toward the development of gene therapy for thyroid cancers (2, 3, 4, 5)
. Selectivity and efficacy are the most critical factors for successful gene therapy, especially for cancer gene therapy using a suicide gene approach. Tumor (or tissue)-specific promoters have been used widely to selectively target tumor cells (6) . One drawback of this transcriptional targeting approach is, however, the relatively low expression levels of such promoters, often resulting in insufficient therapeutic efficacy in cancer gene therapy. This is also the case in gene therapy for thyroid carcinomas using a suicide gene of HSV-TK2 and the TG promoter, one of the thyroid-specific promoters (4) . Thus, our recent studies with retrovirus-mediated gene transfer approach have demonstrated that, although a sufficient cell killing effect was readily observed when the HSV-TK gene was placed under the control of the strong, constitutive CMV promoter in all thyroid cell lines tested, irrespective of their TG expression levels (2 , 3) ; the cytotoxic effect of HSV-TK was less in thyroid carcinoma cells expressing low levels of TG (FRTC cells) when its expression was controlled by the TG promoter (4) . It is crucial to overcome this issue from a clinical point of view, because, although most well-differentiated thyroid carcinomas express relatively high levels of TG, there is a general tendency toward lower TG expression in less differentiated thyroid cancers (1) . In this study, therefore, we attempted to enhance TG promoter activity while maintaining tissue specificity by using a novel method employing the Cre-loxP system with the recombinant adenovirus approach.
| Materials and Methods |
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In Vitro Cytotoxic Assay with Retrovirus Infection.
Retrovirus vectors LNCTK and LNTGTK (Fig. 1A)
have been constructed previously in our laboratory (2
, 4)
. Retrovirus vector transfection, viral infection, and viral titration were performed as described previously (2)
. Polyclonal populations of transduced cells were selected with 800 µg/ml G418 (Geneticin; Wako, Osaka, Japan) for 2 weeks. In the in vitro cytotoxic assay, the cells were seeded at 1-5 x 103 cells/well in 96-well microtiter plates. On the next day, the cells were treated with various concentrations of GCV (Hoffman-La Roche Ltd., Basel, Switzerland) in 100 µl of medium. The cell survival was quantitated with a Cell Counting kit (Wako) 4 days later. Survival ratios were expressed as percentages relative to untreated controls.
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293 cells were transfected with pAxNTGTK, pAxNTGNCre, or pAxCaLNLNTK together with EcoT22I digested Ad5-dlX DNA-terminal protein complex (8) by the calcium phosphate method. Recombinant adenoviruses were generated through homologous recombination and propagated in 293 cells. Preparation of the virus stocks and concentration and purification of the viruses were performed as described previously (9) .
In Vitro LacZ Gene Expression with Adenovirus Infection.
Cells were seeded at 1 to 3 x 105 cells/well in 24-well culture plates. The next day, the cells were infected with AxCALacZ at the MOI indicated. Two days later, the cells were stained with 5-bromo-4-chloro-indolyl-ß-D-galactopyranoside as described previously (7)
.
In Vitro Cytotoxic Assay with Adenovirus Infection.
Subconfluent cells in 6-well culture plates were infected with the recombinant adenoviruses at the MOI indicated. The next day, the cells were seeded at 1-5 x 103 cells/well in 96-well microtiter plates. One day later, the cells were treated with various concentrations of GCV in 100 µl of medium. Cell survival was quantitated 4 days later as described above. Survival ratios were expressed as percentages relative to untreated controls.
In Vivo Cytotoxic Effect with Adenovirus Infection in a s.c. Tumor Model in Nude Mice.
Male nude mice (Charles-River Japan, Tokyo, Japan), 67 weeks of age, received s.c. injections on both flanks with 1 x 107 FRTC cells. Two weeks later, recombinant adenoviruses were directly injected into the tumors from four directions on 4 consequent days. The total amounts of injected viruses were 1 x 109 TCID50tumor. AxNTGNCre and AxCALNLNTK were mixed at a ratio of 2:1. i.p. injections of 100 mg/kg GCV were then performed daily for 2 weeks (days 114). Tumor volumes were calculated as described previously (2)
. The results were expressed as percentages relative to tumor size on day 1. All mice were maintained in Nagasaki University Animal Facility, and all animal studies were conducted in accordance with the principles and the procedures outlined in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals at Nagasaki University School of Medicine.
Statistical analysis was performed using an unpaired Students t test.
| Results and Discussion |
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The surviving curves of control and retrovirus-infected cells treated with GCV for 4 days are shown in Fig. 2
. LNCTK infection comparably sensitized all of the cells to GCV. Thus, sensitivity to GCV was increased
1700 to
2700-fold (the mean of at least two independent experiments) in all three cell lines infected with LNCTK. In contrast, the efficacy of LNTGTK infection was dependent on TG expression status; LNTGTK infection sensitized FRTL5 and FRTC cells
1700- and
130-fold, respectively, to GCV but did not sensitize FRO cells. These data suggest that the TG promoter is as efficacious as the CMV promoter in FRTL5 cells expressing high levels of TG but is less efficient in FRTC cells with very low TG expression.
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The efficiency of adenovirus infection of thyroid cells was first examined with AxCALacZ infection, which contains the Escherichia coli LacZ gene under the control of the CAG promoter (Fig. 1B)
. LacZ expression was detected by 5-bromo-4-chloro-indolyl-ß -d-galactopyranoside staining. Almost 100% of the cells were stained blue at a MOI of 100 in FRTL5 and FRTC and at a MOI of 30 in FRO cells. With the higher MOI, the staining intensity in each of the cells increased further (data not shown).
In the in vitro cytotoxic assay with the recombinant adenovirus vectors (Fig. 3)
, the cells were infected with AxNTGTK or AxNTGNCre/AxCALNLNTK (2:1 ratio) at a MOI required for infecting all cells (100 for FRTL5 and FRTC and 30 for FRO cells). In a preliminary study, a 2:1 ratio of AxNTGNCre and AxCALNLNTK gave the best result (data not shown). As shown in Fig. 3, FRTL5 and FRTC cells were sensitized to GCV
125- and
40-fold, respectively, by AxNTGTK infection and
710- and
440-fold by AxNTGNCre/AxCALNLNTK double infection, thus demonstrating a 510-fold higher efficacy of AxNTGNCre/AxCALNLNTK than AxNTGTK in TG-expressing thyroid cells. By contrast, neither AxNTGTK nor AxNTGNCre/AxCALNLNTK were effective in FRO cells.
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50-fold by using this system in AFP-expressing hepatocarcinoma cells (11)
. This system has also been used for the on/off switching strategy of a gene of interest (7
, 12)
and for the production of a recombinant adenovirus, which carries a gene the product of which is toxic for virus-producing 293 cells (13)
. In this article, we demonstrate that this system is also capable of enhancing the transcriptional activity of TG promoter in TG-expressing thyroid cells in in vitro and in vivo while maintaining tissue specificity. Thus, tissue-specific thyroid cancer gene therapy using a combination of the TG promoter and the Cre-loxP system appears more efficacious than that using the TG promoter alone in thyroid carcinoma cells, particularly those expressing low levels of TG. However, in our opinion, the magnitude of enhancement of the therapeutic efficacy in HSV-TK/GCV by this approach seems somewhat less striking than we expected from the original report mentioned above (11) . In other words, the antitumor effect obtained with this new approach in this study is as yet unsatisfactory to us. The cytotoxic effect of a therapeutic gene may not necessarily be correlated with LacZ expression levels. Further study will be necessary to improve the efficacy.
It should be noted that, with a higher MOI (
300 for FRTL5 and FRTC cells and
100 for FRO cells), although the more profound efficacy was apparently observed in FRTC cells infected with AxNTGTK or AxNTGNCre/AxCALNLNTK, the sensitivity to GCV was also slightly increased by the adenovirus infection (2.510-fold; data not shown) in FRO cells, implying that the TG promoter may be somewhat "leaky" at a very high MOI. Similar results have also been reported in AFP promoter (11)
.
In conclusion, we demonstrate the enhancement by the Cre-loxP system of the activity of the TG promoter in tissue-specific gene therapy for thyroid carcinomas expressing TG. Our data suggest that this system may also be applicable with tissue (or tumor)-specific promoters for other cancer gene therapies with a transcriptional target.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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1 To whom requests for reprints should be addressed, at Department of Pharmacology 1, Nagasaki University School of Medicine, 1-12-4 Sakamoto, Nagasaki 852-8523, Japan. Phone: 81-95-849-7043; Fax: 81-95-849-7044; E-mail: nagayama{at}net.nagasaki-u.ac.jp ![]()
2 The abbreviations used are: HSV-TK, herpes simplex virus-thymidine kinase; TG, thyroglobulin; CMV, cytomegalovirus; GCV, ganciclovir; MOI, multiplicity of infection; AFP,
-fetoprotein. ![]()
Received 2/18/99. Accepted 5/13/99.
| REFERENCES |
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