Combined prokaryotic–eukaryotic delivery and expression of therapeutic factors through a primed autocatalytic positive-feedback loop

Abstract

Progress in bacterial therapy for cancer and infectious diseases is hampered by the absence of safe and efficient vectors. Sustained delivery and high gene expression levels are critical for the therapeutic efficacy. Here we developed a Salmonella typhimrium strain to maintain and safely deliver a plasmid vector to target tissues. This vector is designed to allow dual transcription of therapeutic factors, such as cytotoxic proteins, short hairpin RNAs or combinations, in the nucleus or cytoplasm of eukaryotic cells, with this expression sustained by an autocatalytic positive-feedback loop. Mechanisms to prime the system and maintain the plasmid in the bacterium are also provided. Synergistic effects of attenuated Salmonella and our inter-kingdom system allow the precise expression of Diphtheria toxin A chain (DTA) gene in tumor microenvironment and eradicate large established tumors in immunocompetent animals. In the experiments reported here, 26% of mice (n = 5/19) with aggressive tumors were cured and the others all survived until the end of the experiment. We also demonstrated that ST4 packaged with shRNA-encoding plasmids has sustained knockdown effects in nude mice bearing human MDA-MB-231 xenografts. Three weeks after injection of 5 × 106 ST4/pIKT-shPlk, PLK1 transcript levels in tumors were 62.5 ± 18.6% lower than the vector control group (P = 0.015). The presence of PLK1 5′ RACE-PCR cleavage products confirmed a sustained RNAi-mediated mechanism of action. This innovative technology provides an effective and versatile vehicle for efficient inter-kingdom gene delivery that can be applied to cancer therapy and other purposes.