¹State Key Lab of Genetic Engineering, Department of Genetics, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

Correspondence: Professor R Daming, State Key Lab of Genetic Engineering, Institute of Genetics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China. E-mail: dmren@fudan.edu.cn

Received 21 June 2007; Revised 6 December 2007; Accepted 10 January 2008; Published online 25 April 2008.

Abstract

Some anaerobes and facultative anaerobes have been used in tumor-specific gene therapy by reason of their selective growth in tumors. In this work, we aimed to evaluate the anticancer efficacy of attenuated Salmonella typhimurium as a carrier to deliver the Escherichia coli purine nucleoside phosphorylase (ePNP) gene for GDEPT (gene-directed enzyme-prodrug therapy). A live attenuated purine-auxotrophic strain of S. typhimurium (SC36) was used to carry the pEGFP-C1-ePNP vector that contains a green fluorescent protein (GFP) and an ePNP gene under the control of the human cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter. The function of the ePNP expression vector was confirmed in vitro using the enzymic conversion of 6-methylpurine 2'-deoxyriboside (MePdR) into 6-methylpurine. We also observed a high bystander effect induced by the ePNP/MePdR system with a very low proportion (1% ) of ePNP-positive cells. The killing effect and increased apoptosis induced by SC/ePNP (SC36 carrying the ePNP expression vector) infection were detected by cytotoxicity assay and PI staining flow cytometry analysis, in combination with MePdR administration. Furthermore, SC/ePNP was administered orally into mice bearing melanomas or pulmonary tumors, and its anti-tumor effect was evaluated. When the tumor was huge (500 mm³) at the beginning of MePdR administration, SC/ePNP plus MepdR significantly inhibited tumor growth by about 59–80% and prolonged survival of mice. Complete tumor regression and long-term cure were achieved by MePdR administration, even when the tumor was large (100 mm³) at the beginning of MePdR treatment. Our data support a hopeful view that tumor-targeting SC36 could improve antitumor efficacy of the ePNP/MePdR system due to its preferential accumulation and anticancer activity in tumors.