Construction and characterization of gelonin and saporin plasmids for toxic gene-based cancer therapy.

Toxic gene therapy (or suicidal gene therapy) is gaining enormous interest, specifically for the treatment of cancer. The success of this therapy lies in several crucial factors, including the potency of gene products to kill the transfected tumor cells and the transfection ability of the transfection vehicles. To address the potency problem, in the present study, we engineered two separate mammalian transfection plasmids (pSAP and pGEL) containing genes encoding ribosome inactivating proteins (RIPs), gelonin and saporin. After the successful preparation and amplification of the plasmids, they were tested on various cancer cell lines (HeLa, U87, 9L, and MDA-MB-435) and a noncancerous cell line (293 HEK) using polyethyleneimine (PEI) as the transfection agent. Transfection studies performed under varying gene concentration, incubation time, and gene-to-PEI ratios revealed that, compared to the treatment of pGFP (GFP expression plasmid)/PEI, both pGEL/PEI and pSAP/PEI complexes could induce significantly augmented cytotoxic effects at only 2 μg/mL gene concentration. Importantly, these cytotoxic effects were observed universally in all tested cancer cell lines. Overall, this study demonstrated the potential of pGEL and pSAP as effective gene candidates for the toxic gene-based cancer therapy.