Aim: To study the effect of the hTR-siRNA adenovirus on hTR mRNA gene silence, telomerase activity inhibition and anti-tumor in vitro.
Methods: RNAi adenovirus vector, Ad-hTR-siRNA, and negative control Ad-NT-siRNA were constructed by an improved ligation method. Different tumor cells and liver cell line, HL-7702, were infected with 100 MOI of the recombinant adenoviruses. TRAP-ELISA, Real-time PCR and FCM were used to analyze telomerase activity, hTR mRNA, apoptosis rate and hTERT protein expression.
Results: As compared with Ad-NT-siRNA, Ad-hTR-siRNA reduced both hTR mRNA levels (70.21%) and telomerase activity (58.87%) of HeLa cells significantly, increased apoptosis rate (29.7%). But the telomerase activity of HL-7702 and hTERT protein didn't show the tendency of decrease.
Conclusion: It is supposed that the hTR-siRNA adenovirus could knockdown hTR gene specifically and suppress the tumor cell growth in vitro efficiently. Maybe this siRNA expressing recombinant adenovirus system could be a new method for cancer gene therapy.