Background
Lung cancer is one of the most common malignant neoplasm diseases in which non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) constitutes 80%-85% of all lung cancers [
1]. Due to the lack of early diagnostic methods, most of NSCLC cases are diagnosed at the late phase and patients usually lose the opportunity of surgical treatment. Despite the fact that chemotherapy and radiotherapy provides many options to treat NSCLC, a survival plateau has been reached and its mortality is still in the first place in cancer patients [
2,
3]. Therefore it is urgent to explore other treatment strategies. Molecule targeting therapy represents a rapidly growing cancer treatment strategy and several drugs have been proven effective in many preclinical and clinical setting [
4,
5]. Suicide gene therapy possesses the advantage of molecule targeting strategies because the suicide gene functions in the transformed tumor cells and then selectively kills transformed tumor cells and their surrounding cells via bystander effects. In some extent, the suicide gene therapy could overcome the systemic toxicity of conventional chemotherapy. Herpes Simplex Virus Thymidine Kinase/gancyclovir (HSV-TK/GCV) is one of the most frequently utilized forms of suicide gene therapy. HSV-TK can catalyze GCV into monophosphorylated GCV (GCV-MP) that will then be converted into toxic gancyclovir triphosphate (GCV-TP) by other cellular kinases and thereafter cause cell growth inhibition or initiates cell death. According to previous studies NSCLC is a good target for HSV-TK gene therapy [
6].
How to efficiently and selectively deliver HSV-TK gene into tumor cells? It has been reported that the non-replicative adenoviruses were able to infect and mediated gene transfer into NSCLC [
7]. The replication-competent adenoviruses, also called oncolytic adenoviruses, are thereby a natural extension from the success of non-replicative adenoviruses mediated gene delivery. The advantage of using the replication-competent adenoviruses for therapeutic gene delivery is that it can selectively replicate and spread in malignant tumor tissues, and finally lead to remarkably increased therapeutic gene expression in tumor cells accompanying adenoviral replication and spread. The current strategy to generate tumor-selective replication-competent adenovirus is to replace the adenovirus E1 gene promoter with other tumor or tissue-specific promoter [
8,
9]. Since human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) is over-expressed in all types of NSCLC, but is inactivated in normal cells [
10], in the present study, we chose the hTERT promoter to drive adenoviral E1A gene expression and generated a tumor-selective replication-competent adenoviral vector. In order to further enhance therapeutic efficacy, we inserted a constitutive expression HSV-TK gene into this vector to develop a novel armed oncolytic adenovirus (Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK). We subsequently evaluated whether Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK could preferentially replicate in NSCLC and HSV-TK/GCV system could effectively kill NSCLC both in vitro and in vivo.
Materials and methods
Cells and cell culture
HEK293 (human embryonic kidney 293) cells were purchased from Invitrogen (San Diego, CA, USA). NCIH460 (human large cell lung cancer), A549 (human lung adenocarcinoma), SW1990 (human pancreas cancer), Hela (human cervical carcinoma), and SMMC-7721 (human hepatoma) were obtained from the Cells Bank of the Chinese Academy of Science (Shanghai, China). Primary human dermal fibroblasts were provided by our laboratory, and which was derived from bioptic tissue for dermatoplasty (a written informed consent was obtained from patients). Cells were cultured in DMEM or RPMI 1640 medium supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS).All of the tumor cells had activated telomerase activities, while primary human dermal fibroblasts showed lower telomerase activity according to our previous study.
Adenoviral vectors
Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK is an oncolytic adenoviral vector that is able to replicate in hTERT activated tumor cells and carries a constitutive expression HSV-TK-HAtag cassette. The construction of Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK has been described previously [
11]. Ad.GFP is a replication-defective Ad that lacks adenoviral E1A gene and expresses the green fluorescent protein gene (GFP). Ad.null is also a replication-defective Ad but expresses no extraneous gene. The dl309 is a wild-type Ad that contains intact adenoviral E1 gene. Ad.hTERT-E1A and Ad.hTERT-E1A-CD had similar structure with Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK and were used as positive control for oncolytic adenovirus. The former contains no therapeutic gene while the later has Escherichia colicytosine deaminase gene (E coli CD) instead of Herpes Simplex Virus Thymidine Kinase (HSV-TK). Purified, high titer viral stocks were generated according to the protocol described by Huang et al [
12]. The schematic diagram of Ad.hTERT-E1A-CD or Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK was shown in Additional file
1.
Western blot analysis
The adenoviral HSV-TK and E1A expression was confirmed by Western blot as described below. The cells were plated in 6-well plates and infected with the Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 10 plaque forming units (PFU) per cell. Cells were harvested and lysed 48 h later after infection in SDS sample buffer (containing 10 mM β-mercaptoethanol, 100 mM Tris-CL [pH 6.8], 2% SDS, and 0.1% bromophenol blue). Protein samples were separated by 10% SDS polyacrylamide gel and transferred to a polyvinylidene difluoride membrane (Amersham, Buckinghamshire, UK). The blots were probed with anti-HA (Sigma, St. Louis, MO, USA) monoclonal antibody which detected HSV-TK and anti-Ad2 E1A (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Santa Cruz, CA, USA) polyclonal antibody, followed by a secondary horseradish peroxidase-conjugated antibody. The antigen-antibody complexes were visualized using the enhanced chemiluminescence kit (Roche, New York, NY, USA) as recommended by the manufacturer.
Cytopathic effect assays
The cytopathic effect (CPE) was determined by three different methods. At first, tumor cells such as NCIH460, SW1990, SMMC-7721 and Hela were plated into 24-well plates and either infected with different dose of Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK, Ad.hTERT-E1A-CD, dl309, Ad.GFP or treated with prodrug gancyclovir (GCV) or 5-fluorocytosine (5-FC) or untreated on the next day respectively. Five days later the plates were stained with crystal violet and the remaining living cells were determined by intensity of blue color. The 2nd method was Cell Counting Kit-8 assay (CCK-8, Dojindo Molecular Technologies Inc., Gaithersburg, MD, USA) which could quantitatively determine living cells by measuring optic intensity. The tumor cells, NCIH460, A549 and Hela grown in 96-well plates were treated with 10 MOI of Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK, Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK plus GCV or GCV alone. Five days later the remaining living cells were determined by CCK-8 assay. The cytopathic effect was also observed by microscopy for morphologic changes. NCIH460 cells and primary human fibroblasts were plated into 6-well plates and infected with 10 MOI of Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK, dl309, or Ad.GFP respectively on the next day. CPE was monitored and photographed by light microscopy at the different time points.
Viral replication
To determine viral progeny production, NCIH460 cells (4 × 105cells/well) and primary fibroblasts (4 × 105cells/well) were plated into 6-well plates and infected with Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK at 10 MOI for 4 h. The medium containing extra virus was removed and the cells were washed once with PBS and cultured with fresh mediun. 24 h and 5 days later after infection, the cells were collected and lysed by three rounds of freezing and thawing, and then centrifuged to collect the supernatant. The adenoviral particles in the infected tumor cells or fibroblasts supernatant were determined by plaque assay in HEK293 cells.
Animal experiments
Specific pathogen-free male athymic BALB/c nude mice, 4-6 weeks old (20-30 g), were obtained from the Institute of Animal Center (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China). Mice were housed five per cage and allowed free access to food and water. All animal procedures were performed according to principles of laboratory animal care (NIH publication No. 85-23, revised 1985) and the current Chinese regulations and standards on the use of laboratory animals. For tumor cell implantation, NCIH460 cells (5 × 106) were subcutaneously injected into the right dorsal lumbar region in 100 μl of phosphate buffered saline (PBS). When the tumors grew up to approximately 100 mm3, the animals were randomly divided into 4 groups i.e. Ad.null, Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK, Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK plus GCV and PBS plus GCV, and each group contained at least 7 animals. About 1 × 109 PFU of Ad.null orAd.hTERT-E1A-TK in 100 μl PBS or 100 μl PBS alone were injected into tumors respectively. On the 3rd day post virus injection, GCV (100 mg/kg/day) was intraperitoneally administered for 14 consecutive days. The tumor growth was assessed by measuring bi-dimensional diameters twice a week with calipers. The tumor volumes (V) were calculated according to the formula V = 1/2ab2 (a represents the largest diameter and b represents the smallest diameter). All animals were killed 4 weeks later after treatment and then the tumors were removed and weighed.
Histopathologic examination of tumors
The resected tumors were fixed with 10% formalin and embedded in paraffin. The tumor sections were stained with hematoxylin-eosin and evaluated by two individual pathologists.
Statistical analysis
All numerical data were expressed as mean ± SD. A comparison of means among two or more groups was performed using one-way analysis of variance or nonparametric test, and further confirmed by post-hoc analyses with S-N-K or Games-Howell test. All statistical analyses were conducted using SPSS 11.5 software (SPSS, Chicago, IL). Differences with p < 0.05 were considered as significant.
Conclusion
Taking together, we have generated a novel oncolytic adenoviral vector in which the main difference with currently used oncolytic adenoviral vector ONYX-015 is hTERT controlled replication and armed with HSV-TK. The hTERT promoter used in this study is high stringency and provide the base for tumor-specific replication. Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK itself was able to inhibit tumor growth thanks to its replicative ability and oncolytic effect. Moreover, its tumor killing effect could be further enhanced by prodrug GCV. Our study showed that Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK/GCV could efficiently kill NSCLC tumor cells both in vitro and in vivo. Therefore, we concluded that Ad.hTERT-E1A-TK, as a potent and safe antitumor strategy, could provide a potential new option for NSCLC biotherapy.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Grant of National Basic Research Project of China (2010CB529902), National High-tech R&D program (2007AA021202), National Natural Science Foundation for Outstanding Youth (30325043).
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors' contributions
JFZ carried out most of the experiments and organized data for manuscript. FW, HPW, HML, XFC performed some experiments involving in viral construction, package, Western blot or cell culture. WQ and PKR participated in data organization and manuscript drafting. QH performed project design and manuscript writing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.