Systemic delivery of fusogenic membrane glycoprotein-expressing neural stem cells to selectively kill tumor cells.

ABSTRACT: Intravenously injected neural stem cells (NSCs) can infiltrate both primary and metastatic tumor sites; thus, they are attractive tumor-targeting vehicles for delivering anticancer agents. However, because the systemic distribution of the injected NSCs involves normal organs and might induce off-target actions leading to unintended side effects, clinical applications of this approach is impeded. Given that the vesicular stomatitis virus glycoprotein (VSV-G) can promote the formation of multinucleated syncytia to kill cells in a pH-dependent manner, we engineered a pH sensor of VSV-G and generated a novel VSV-G mutant that efficiently promotes syncytium formation at the tumor extracellular pH (pHe) but not at pH 7.4. Using transduced NSCs derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs),

SUBMITTER: Zhu D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3734663 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature