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Bacterial delivery of a novel cytolysin to hypoxic areas of solid tumors

Gene Therapy volume 16, pages 329–339 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

The efficacy of current anti-cancer gene therapies is limited by the inability of gene vectors to penetrate the poorly vascularized, hypoxic regions of tumors, leaving these sites untreated. We describe a new approach for targeting gene therapy to these sites, which employs an attenuated strain of the non-pathogenic bacterium, Salmonella typhimurium, carrying an exogenous (that is, reporter or therapeutic) gene under the regulation of a new, highly hypoxia-inducible promoter (FF+20*). This bacterial vector was seen to rapidly migrate into, and thrive in, hypoxic areas of both mammary tumor spheroids grown in vitro and orthotopic mammary tumors after systemic injection. Using the reporter gene construct, FF+20*-lacZ, we show that bacterial expression of high levels of β-galactosidase occurred only in hypoxic/necrotic sites of spheroids and tumors. We then replaced the reporter gene with one encoding a novel cytotoxic protein (HlyE) and showed that this was also expressed by bacteria only in hypoxic regions of murine mammary tumors. This resulted in a marked increase in tumor necrosis and reduced tumor growth. Our system represents a promising new strategy for delivering gene therapy to poorly vascularized regions of tumors and shows, for the first time, the efficacy of HlyE as an anti-tumor agent.

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Acknowledgements

We thank James Raleigh (University of North Carolina) for the polyclonal pimonidazole antibody; Duncan Maskell (University of Cambridge) for S. typhimurium strain SL3261; Ken Gerdes (University of South Denmark) for plasmids; Derek Borwick and Martin Dunphy for technical assistance with the in vivo experiments; Yorkshire Cancer Research (UK), the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, UK and the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (PD/2002/87) for their financial support.

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Author notes

  1. J Green and C E Lewis: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tumor Targeting Group, Academic Unit of Pathology, University of Sheffield Medical School, Sheffield, UK

    R M Ryan, P J Williams, S Tazzyman & C E Lewis

  2. Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    R M Ryan, J Green & S Hunt

  3. Molecular and Cellular Therapeutics, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

    J H Harmey

  4. Department of Surgery, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin 9, Ireland

    S C Kehoe

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Correspondence to C E Lewis.

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Ryan, R., Green, J., Williams, P. et al. Bacterial delivery of a novel cytolysin to hypoxic areas of solid tumors. Gene Ther 16, 329–339 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/gt.2008.188

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