PLoS ONE (Jan 2013)

λ Phage nanobioparticle expressing apoptin efficiently suppress human breast carcinoma tumor growth in vivo.

  • Alireza Shoae-Hassani,
  • Alireza Shoae-Hassani,
  • Peyman Keyhanvar,
  • Alexander Marcus Seifalian,
  • Seyed Abdolreza Mortazavi-Tabatabaei,
  • Narmin Ghaderi,
  • Khosro Issazadeh,
  • Nour Amirmozafari,
  • Javad Verdi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0079907
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 11
p. e79907

Abstract

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Using phages is a novel field of cancer therapy and phage nanobioparticles (NBPs) such as λ phage could be modified to deliver and express genetic cassettes into eukaryotic cells safely in contrast with animal viruses. Apoptin, a protein from chicken anemia virus (CAV) has the ability to specifically induce apoptosis only in carcinoma cells. We presented a safe method of breast tumor therapy via the apoptin expressing λ NBPs. Here, we constructed a λ ZAP-CMV-apoptin recombinant NBP and investigated the effectiveness of its apoptotic activity on BT-474, MDA-MB-361, SKBR-3, UACC-812 and ZR-75 cell lines that over-expressing her-2 marker. Apoptosis was evaluated via annexin-V fluorescent iso-thiocyanate/propidium iodide staining, flow-cytometric method and TUNEL assay. Transfection with NBPs carrying λ ZAP-CMV-apoptin significantly inhibited growth of all the breast carcinoma cell lines in vitro. Also nude mice model implanted BT-474 human breast tumor was successfully responded to the systemic and local injection of untargeted recombinant λ NBPs. The results presented here reveal important features of recombinant λ nanobioparticles to serve as safe delivery and expression platform for human cancer therapy.