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Start of funding 01.01.2009
Development and functional testing of new suicide genes for treating cancer and infectious diseases
Dr. Christian Berens
Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
Department of Microbiology
Prof. Dr. B. Matija Peterlin
University of California, San Francisco
Inducible control of cell death is a desired phenomenon in both experimental and clinical science. Inducible death vectors can provide critical tools for treatment of many diseases, such as safety switches for adaptive immune transfer, antibody-based cancer therapies and specific elimination of malignant or virally-infected cells. A potentially interesting cytotoxic protein is HEXIM1 (HMBA-induced-protein 1) which inhibits the positive transcription elongation factor b (P-TEFb). Its overexpression can lead to apoptosis in malignant cells and also in developing breast epithelial cells. The Peterlin group has developed several dominant-negative HEXIM1 variants that might induce cell-death even more efficiently. These will be evaluated by the Berens group in well-characterized inducible regulatory systems and their potency compared to that of established human pro-apoptotic proteins.