Use of Carcinoembryonic Antigen Gene Promoter in Colorectal Carcinoma-specific Suicidal Gene Therapy.

The possibility of tumor-specific suicidal gene therapy of colorectalcarcinoma was investigated using carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) -positive human colorectal carcinoma cell line LoVo and CEA-negative HeLa cell line as a model. After confirming cellular specificity of cea promoter by CAT assay, eukaryotic expression plasmid pCEACD was constructed in which the expresstion of E. coli cytosine deaminase (CD) gene was under the control of cea promoter. The expression of CD gene increased the sensitivity of LoVo cells to 5-fluorocytosine (5FC) by 750 fold, while the sensitivity of HeLa cells to 5FC was increased by only 7.5 fold. These results suggest that the expression of CD gene driven by cea promoter specifically killed CEA-positive colorectal carcinoma cells. Transmission electron microscopy and DNA fragmentation assay demonstrate that CD/5FC system induced apoptosis in LoVo cells.