Construction and expression of wild-type p53 gene inducing apoptosis driven by hTERT promoter on bladder cancer cells

Objective: To construct the wild-type p53 gene vector controlled by human telomerase reverse transcriptase（hTERT） promoter and to explore the inhibitory effect of wild-type p53 gene under control of this promoter on bladder cancer cell line T24 in vitro. Methods: The enhanced green fluorescent protein（EGFP） and wild-type p53 gene were cloned into the vector carrying hTERT promoter,and recombinant vectors phTERT-EGFP and phTERT-p53 were constructed.The plasmids were transfected into bladder cancer cell line T24.The gene expression was measured by observing the expression of EGFP under the fluorescent microscopy,and the cell growth of transfected T24 cells was evaluated by MTT assay,respectively. Results: Expression of EGFP driven by hTERT gene promoter was detected in T24 cells with telomerase activity,and not detected in cells without telomerase activity.Recombinant adenovirus phTERT-p53 could selectively infect T24 cells,and the proliferation of T24 cells showed significantly inhibitory effect（P＜0.05）. Conclusion: The hTERT promoter can specifically control the target gene expression in telomerase-positive bladder cancer cells but not the normal cells,suggesting that the wild-type p53 gene under control of the hTERT promoter is a promising targeted gene therapy for bladder cancers.