Comparative activity of several promoters in driving NIS expression in melanoma cells

Targeted drug delivery systems are special importance for developing gene therapeutic drugs that recognize and eliminate tumor cells. It is desirable that therapeutic genes be expressed predominantly in tumor cells after their targeted delivery into the tumor. Hence, the distribution of the expression product through various tissues should be studied when testing a therapeutic gene in vivo. The sodium iodide symporter (NIS) is attractive as a reporter because its tissue level is easy to quantify by noninvasive imaging methods. Therapeutic gene expression in tumor cells is achieved using various promoters, including strong nonspecific promoters; moderately active tissue-specific promoters; and tumor-specific promoters, which function in a broad range of tumor cells, but have low activity. The relationship between the promoter strength and reporter NIS activity is still unclear. The reporter gene was used to test three promoters types for activity in melanoma cells. The functional activity of NIS expressed from a cloned gene was compared for the three promoters types. Although the promoters greatly varied in strength, only minor changes were observed for NIS functional activity. A relatively weak melanoma-specific promoter ensured a high NIS activity in melanoma cells. Weaker tumorspecific promoters determined a high NIS activity only in some cells of the melanoma origin.