WPRE-mediated enhancement of gene expression is promoter and cell line specific

The success of gene therapy approaches relies on sufficiently high levels of expression of the therapeutic gene. However, if tissue specific or tumour specific gene expression is desired, a lower level of transgene expression usually has to be accepted due to the weakness of the majority of available tissue or tumour specific promoters. This obstacle can in part be overcome by the insertion of viral cis-acting elements that enhance gene expression in various expression vector contexts regardless of the respective promoter. We designed a series of murine leukaemia virus (MLV)-based retroviral promoter conversion (ProCon) vectors that contain the woodchuck hepatitis post-transcriptional regulatory element (WPRE) and evaluated its use by measuring enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) levels and viral titres. In viral vector packaging cells, when the EGFP encoding gene was transcribed from the MLV promoter, incorporation of the WPRE resulted in a marked improvement of the vectors in terms of EGFP expression and virus titres. However, in infected cells after promoter conversion had taken place, the effect of the WPRE became promoter and cell line dependent. When the EGFP gene was transcribed from the heterologous mouse mammary tumour virus (MMTV) promoter the same beneficial role of the WPRE on transgene expression was observed in all eight cell lines tested. In contrast, when EGFP gene expression was driven by the murine whey acidic protein (WAP) promoter, the positive effect of the WPRE could only be observed in two cell lines whereas expression was actually reduced in the six other cell lines tested. This decrease of EGFP expression was not only demonstrated at the protein level but also manifested on the RNA level.