Effect of suicidal gene combined with irradiation on esophageal carcinoma cell line

Objective: As generally known that non-cytotoxic pro-drag can be transformed into cytotoxic drug by suicide gene, this work is to investigate the effect of Coli cytosine deaminase/5-fluorocytosine suicide gene (CD/5-FC) used alone or combined with irradiation in esophageal carcinoma cell line(EC). Methods: CD gene was amplified from Coli DNA genome library with PCR technique, with the eukaryotic vector pcDNA3.1-CD then constructed. ECl09 cells were transfected with pcDNA3.1-CD by liposome method. The cytotoxic effect, bystander effect and radiosensitization effect of CD/5-FC in ECl09 was analyzed. Results: The transfection of CD gene into ECl09 and its transcription was confirmed by RT-PCR method. In vitro, 5-FC showed significantly cytotoxic effect on the EPC cell transfected with CD gene. After adding 5-FC , the survival rate of cultured cell containing 5 % transfect CD gene cell was 41.8 % ± 14.2% while that in the control group was 94.6 ± 4.3 %, (t=3.14, P < 0.05). The survival rate of cultured cell containing 10% transfected CD gene cell was 37.8 ± 4.4% compared to 95.6% ± 5.4% in the control group, (t=9.75, P<0.01). CD/5-FC showed significant radiosen-sitization effect, the survival fraction of CD transfected cell was much lower in 5-FC combined with irradiation, when compared with 5-FC alone and radiotherapy alone group together, (F=11.50, P < 0.01 ). When it was compared with 5-FC alone group and irradiation alone group separately, the difference was also significant( F=4.11, P < 0.05 and F10.53, P < 0.01, respectively). Conclusions: Suicide gene CD/5-FC shows conspicuous by-stander effect and radiosensitization effect. (authors)