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  • Viral Transfer Technology
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A binary adenoviral vector system for expressing high levels of the proapoptotic gene bax

Gene Therapy volume 7, pages 75–79 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

The bax gene plays a critical role in signaling apoptosis and expression through gene transfer may be valuable in the treatment of a variety of apoptosis-related diseases such as cancer. However, constructing an adenoviral vector expressing a bax gene driven by a constitutive promoter has been difficult, presumably because of the gene's high proapoptotic activity. Here we report a system that induces the expression of the bax gene safely by adenovirus-mediated gene cotransfer. Briefly, the system involves an adenoviral vector containing a human bax cDNA driven by a synthetic promoter consisting of five GAL4-binding sites and a TATA box (GT). This vector expresses a minimal background level of bax protein in cultured mammalian cells thus preventing apoptosis of packaging cells, however, expression of the bax gene can be induced substantially in vitro and in vivo by transferring it into target cells along with an adenoviral vector expressing the transactivator, fusion protein GAL4/VP16. Extensive apoptosis was observed after induction of the bax gene both in cultured human lung carcinoma cells and in the livers of Balb/c mice. Our results suggest that this GAL4 gene regulatory system provides an alternative approach to constructing viral vectors that express potentially toxic genes.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Jude Richard for editorial review and Monica Contreras for assistance in preparing this manuscript. This study was funded by a grant from The University of Texas Physicians Referral Service, an NIH grant for a Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) in Lung Cancer (P50–CA70907), and an NIH Core Grant for DNA sequencing (CA 16672).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, The University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

    S Kagawa, L Ji, K Xu, S G Swisher, J A Roth & B Fang

  2. Department of Surgical Oncology, Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, The University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

    S A Pearson

  3. Department of Molecular Pathology, Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, The University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA

    T J McDonnell

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  1. S Kagawa
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  6. S G Swisher
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  7. J A Roth
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  8. B Fang
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Kagawa, S., Pearson, S., Ji, L. et al. A binary adenoviral vector system for expressing high levels of the proapoptotic gene bax. Gene Ther 7, 75–79 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.gt.3301048

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