Application of adenovirus-mediated human telomerase catalytic subunit (hTERT) gene promoter in ovarian cancer gene therapy

Abstract

Telomerase is a ribonucleoprotein complex whose function is to add telomeric repeats to chromosomal ends. Telomerase consists of two essential components, telomerase RNA template (hTR) and catalytic subunit (hTERT). hTERT is expressed only in cells and tissues positive for telomerase activity, i.e., tumor and fetal cells. In this report, the possibility of utilization of the hTERT promoter in targeted cancer gene therapy was tested. The hTERT promoter was cloned in the replacement of the CMV promoter, and the HSV-TK gene was subcloned to be controlled by the hTERT Gene promoter in the adenovirus shuttle plasmid. Then, the recombinant adenovirus Ad-hT-TK was constructed and was infected into normal and human gynecological cancer cell lines. The selective tumor specific cell death by Ad-hT-TK was identified through these experiments, showing that Ad-hT-TK could be used for targeted cancer gene therapy.