A Strategy for Enhancing the Transcriptional Activity of Weak Cell Type-Specific Promoters
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Gene Therapy (1998) 5, 1656–1664 1998 Stockton Press All rights reserved 0969-7128/98 $12.00 http://www.stockton-press.co.uk/gt A strategy for enhancing the transcriptional activity of weak cell type-specific promoters DM Nettelbeck, V Je´roˆme and R Mu¨ ller Institut fu¨r Molekularbiologie und Tumorforschung (IMT), Philipps-Universita¨t Marburg, Emil-Mannkopff-Strasse 2, D-35033 Marburg, Germany Cell type- and tissue-specific promoters play an important moter to drive the simultaneous expression of the desired role in the development of site-selective vectors for gene effector/reporter gene product and a strong artificial tran- therapy. A large number of highly specific promoters has scriptional activator which stimulates transcription through been described, but their applicability is often hampered appropriate binding sites in the promoter. Using a VP16- by their inefficient transcriptional activity. In this study, we LexA chimeric transcription factor, we show that this describe a new strategy for enhancing the activity of weak approach leads to a 14- to Ͼ100-fold enhancement of both promoters without loss of specificity. The basic principle of the endothelial cell-specific von Willebrand factor promoter this strategy is to establish a positive feedback loop which and the gastrointestinal-specific sucrase-isomaltase pro- is initiated by transcription from a cell type-specific pro- moter while maintaining approximately 30- to Ͼ100-fold moter. This was achieved by using a cell type-specific pro- cell type specificity. Keywords: tissue-specific promoters; endothelial cell-specific transcription; von Willebrand factor promoter; gastrointes- tinal-specific transcription; sucrase isomaltase promoter; transcriptional targeting Introduction most, if not all, tumor cells have been successfully incor- porated into experimental gene therapy strategies. Fur- The construction of vectors targeting gene expression to thermore, regulatory sequences inducible by therapeutic specific sites in the organism is one of the current chal- dose of ionizing radiation, such as the egr-1 promoter,13 lenges in the field of gene therapy. In view of the fact or in response to oncogenic lesions, such as the erbB2 that the efficient targeted transduction of genes still rep- promoter,14 are worth mentioning in the same context. In resents a major obstacle, the possibility of restricting gene addition to these promoters, a plethora of other poten- expression to specific cell populations through specific tially useful transcriptional regulatory sequences with a 1–3 promoters is of particular importance. This not only high degree of specificity has been described.1–3 applies to the treatment of systemic diseases, such as Some of these promoters appear to be ideally suited metastatic cancer, but also to local gene therapy, whose for gene therapy, because they combine strong transcrip- efficacy and safety can be improved by the use of cell tional activity with a high degree of specificity. This is, type-specific promoters which keep the expression of the for instance, true for the melanocyte-specific tyrosinase therapeutic gene in non-target cells at a minimum. promoter.4–6,15 Frequently, however, specific promoters For these reasons, many of the recently described are inefficient activators of transcription which severely experimental gene therapy protocols make use of cell limits their applicability. A typical example is the von 1–3 type- or tissue-specific promoters. These include the Willebrand factor (vWF) promoter, which exhibits a tyrosinase promoter for directing gene expression to particularly high degree of endothelial cell (EC) speci- 4–6 ␣ melanoma cells, the -fetoprotein promoter for hepa- ficity compared with other EC promoters, but is a poor 7 toma cells, the mucin-1 promoter for mammary carci- activator of transcription16–19 (see also Results below). 8 noma, the prostate-specific antigen promoter for prostate Other EC promoters are stronger, but less specific, such 9 carcinoma or the neuron-specific enolase promoter for as the promoters for PECAM-1/CD3120,21 or flk- 10 neuronal cells. In other studies, transcriptional control 1/KDR.22,23 Another example is the promoter of the suc- elements which can stimulate transcription in response rase-isomaltase (SI) gene which is highly specific for to disease-specific alterations, such as hypoxic con- intestinal cells and gastrointestinal tumors,24,25 but again 11 12 ditions or the loss of cell cycle checkpoints in tumors, is a poor transcriptional activator (see Results below). In have also been used. In these scenarios, promoters con- the present study, we have chosen the vWF and SI pro- taining binding sites for hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF- moters as models for the establishment of a strategy that 1) or the transcription factor E2F whose repression would be suitable for enhancing the transcriptional through the retinoblastoma protein pathway is lost in activity of weak promoters without affecting their speci- ficity (self-enhancing promoters).26 This goal was achi- eved by incorporating into these promoters a positive 26 Correspondence: R Mu¨ller feedback loop provided by a chimeric transcription fac- Received 20 May 1998; accepted 15 July 1998 tor consisting of the strong herpes simplex virus VP16 Enhancing cell type-specific transcription DM Nettelbeck et al 1657 transcriptional activation domain27,28 fused to the DNA- binding domain of LexA.29 Results Comparative analysis of EC-specific promoters A comparison of different EC promoters in various ECs and non-endothelial cell lines was performed in order to identify a suitable promoter for the transcriptional tar- geting of ECs. The promoters of the human vWF,17 PECAM-120,21 and KDR22 genes were analyzed in transi- ent luciferase assays using human umbilical vein ECs (HUVECs), bovine aortic ECs (BAECs), mouse NIH3T3 fibroblasts and the human melanoma cell line MeWo. As shown in Figure 1a, a clear selectivity for ECs was found with all three promoters, with the highest degree of cell type specificity seen with the vWF promoter. This is particularly well documented by the data in Figure 1b which show a complete lack of activity in all non-endo- thelial cell lines tested (NIH3T3, MeWo, 10T1/2, HeLa), ie RLU values similar to those obtained with the pro- moterless basic vector, while both the PECAM-1 and KDR promoter showed readily detectable activities in the non-endothelial cells (Figure 1a). We also tested other fragments of the KDR and PECAM-1 promoters (see Materials and methods for details), but these showed even lower levels of activity and/or specificity (data not shown). In contrast to its high degree of specificity, the vWF promoter is endowed with very poor transcriptional activation properties which severely limits its applica- bility (10–20% of SV40 promoter; Figure 1a). In a first attempt to improve the activity of the vWF promoter we tested a construct in which the SV40 enhancer was placed upstream of the promoter. This construct (SV40EvWF) showed strongly increased transcriptional activity, but the cell type specificity was largely lost. We also tested other EC promoters, including those of the human endo- glin (kindly provided by W. Graulich, IMT, Marburg, Figure 1 (a)Activity of different promoters in ECs and non-endothelial Germany) and human P-selectin30 genes, but these did cells after transient transfection of luciferase reporter constructs. Values not provide the same high degree of specificity seen with were standardized individually for each cell line using a SV40 promoter the vWF promoter (data not shown). We did not include (SV40p) construct. Basic, promoterless pGL3 vector; SV40EvWF, human the preproendothelin promoter31 in these studies because vWF promoter with an upstream SV40 enhancer. (b) Activity of the vWF promoter in ECs and non-endothelial cells after transient transfection of its activity has been reported to be restricted to bigger luciferase reporter constructs. Values were standardized individually for 32 blood vessels and is also active in some epithelial cells, each cell line using the promoterless pGL3 vector (basic) which allows for which precludes its use for targeting the vasculature in a clearer representation of the vWF promoter activity in the various cell tumors or other proliferative diseases. lines (especially the lack of activity in non-endothelial cells). The data shown are averages of triplicates. The error bars indicate the standard deviations. Establishment of a positive feedback loop for the vWF promoter: proof of principle In view of the data discussed above, we sought to estab- for details) into HUVECs, BAECs, NIH3T3 cells and lish a new strategy that would allow for an enhancement MeWo cells. The data in Figure 3b (standardized to SV40 of promoter activity by introducing a positive feedback promoter activity (SP40p) for each cell line) and Figure 3c loop. The basic principle of this strategy is to use a cell demonstrate that (1) the insertion of the seven LexA sites type-specific promoter to drive the simultaneous into the vWF promoter (LexvWFLuc) had no effect on expression of the desired effector/reporter gene product activity or specificity; (2) the cotransfection of a SV40 pro- and a strong artificial transcriptional activator, ie a chim- moter-driven expression vector encoding a VP16-LexA eric protein consisting of the DNA-binding domain of fusion protein (SV-VPLex) led to a dramatic increase in LexA29 and the strong herpes simplex virus VP16 tran- activity (approximately 30- to 70-fold), but the promoter scriptional activation