Adenovirus-mediated hypoxia-targeting cytosine deaminase gene therapy enhances radiotherapy in tumour xenografts

Hypoxia is closely associated with the radioresistance of tumours; therefore, targeting hypoxic areas is very important for cancer therapy. The aim of this study is to establish such a targeting strategy by applying a bacterial cytosine deaminase (BCD)/5-fluorocytosine (5-FC) gene therapy system and to examine whether the strategy enhances the efficacy of radiotherapy in a tumour xenograft. The hypoxia-responsive promoter 5HREp, in which five copies of the hypoxia-response element (HRE) enhance transcription from a cytomegalovirus minimal promoter, was employed to induce the expression of BCD under hypoxic conditions. The adenoviral vector Ad/5HREp-BCD, encoding the gene 5HREp-BCD, robustly induced BCD expression under hypoxic conditions and this led to significant cytotoxicity in combination with 5-FC in vitro. Intratumoral Ad/5HREp-BCD administration resulted in the expression of BCD at the border between normoxic and necrotic regions. The BCD/5-FC gene therapy enhanced the therapeutic effects of both single (12.5 Gy) and fractionated (3 Gy × 5 days) radiotherapy with few side effects and significantly increased tumour growth doubling time by up to 2.4-fold (P<0.01) and 2.5-fold (P<0.05), respectively. All of these results suggest that the present BCD/5-FC gene therapy has the ability to specifically target hypoxic tumour cells and significantly improves the control of tumour growth after radiotherapy.