VP22-chimeric transcription factors for gene therapy of hepatocellular carcinomas

Background: Gene therapy with VP22 mediated intrahepatic and intratumoral trafficking of p53 results in regression of orthotopic morris hepatoma tumors in vivo. This attractive therapeutic strategy is limited to most human hepatocellular carcinomas because of resistance to p53-dependent apoptosis. Therefore it was the aim of our study to utilize VP22-mediated protein trafficking of other therapeutic proteins to sensitize p53 wild type hepatoma cells to p53-mediated apoptosis. Methods/Results: We cotransfected expression plasmids of p53-VP22 with C/EBPα, C/EBPβ, HNF1, c-met and HGF and investigated the susceptibi…