32%* Lipofectamine group 5 5.83 ± 0.14 2.51 ± 0.02 6.41%* Data are expressed as mean ± standard deviation from three experiments. * indicates p < 0.0001 compared with the other group. 7. Injection of pGL3-basic-hTERTp-TK-EGFP-CMV/GCV had no toxicity to liver Selleckchem Everolimus and kidney of nude mice We further examined

whether injection of GCV and the enhanced plasmid could have any toxicity to nude mouse. No obvious damages were observed in H&E stain in the livers and kidneys from nude mice in GCV/enhanced, GCV and Lipofectamine 2000 groups. Discussions Molecularly targeted therapy is a promising research area in cancer therapy. Application of suicide gene in tumor therapy was limited due to lack of selectivity. Suicide gene TK or CD expression system driven by tumor-specific promoter has overcome the disadvantage and become a powerful modality in cancer therapy. Identification of molecular

targets is the key in molecularly high throughput screening compounds targeted therapy. Molecules involved in carcinogenesis, cancer gene mutation, tumor angiogenesis and tumor signal transduction, telomerase, and growth factors such as epidermal growth factor are potential targets for tumor treatment. Gene mutation [13], EB virus [14], telomerase [1] and nasopharyngeal cancer stem cells [10, 15, 16] are reportedly involved in the progress of nasopharyngeal cancer. Therapies targeted to the molecules and molecules related to those mentioned above have made primary progress in nasopharyngeal cancer treatment [14, 8, 10]. We have found that introduction of TK expression vector driven by hTERT promoter (hTERTp/TK) could kill nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells, nasopharyngeal carcinoma stem cells, and nasopharyngeal tumor xenograft in nude mice without side effects on cultured normal cells and damaging mouse liver and kidney functions [17]. Studies on other tumors also confirmed the efficacy of hTERTp/TK for cancer therapy. Introduction of herpes simplex TK gene expression virus vector driven by hTERT promoter (AdhTERT/TK)

can specifically kill the undifferentiated thyroid tumor and thyroid tumor xenograft in nude mice, enhance the tumor GCV sensitivity without toxic reaction in liver and the whole body examined by liver pathology and serum enzymology [18]. By contrast, introduction of TK gene expression vector driven by CMV click here promoter (CMV/TK) not only kills tumor xenograft, but also demonstrates obvious liver pathological changes and damaged liver function revealed by serum enzymology. In addition, hTERT promoter has been used to target other tumor killing factors, such as caspase 8, TRAIL and Bax, and subsequently induces tumor specific apoptosis [19, 18, 20–23] and enhances the sensitivity of tumor cells to GCV without adverse effect. Thus, targeted gene therapy remains a highly promising system and progress in this field is gaining momentum. An ideal targeted vector should have both good tumor specificity and high killing efficacy.