Anticancer activity of oncolytic adenoviruses carrying p53 is augmented by 11R in gallbladder cancer cell lines in vitro and in vivo

Gallbladder cancer (GBC) is a rare disease associated with an extremely poor patient prognosis, and occasionally, aberrant expression of p53 is present. Considering that p53 is one of the most widely studied tumor‑suppressor genes, we used a cell-penetrating peptide, 11R, to enhance the transferring efficiency of the oncolytic adenovirus carrying the p53 gene by constructing SG7605-11R-p53, a gene-viral therapy system which has higher specificity, enhanced safety, and efficacy. After infection with SG7605-11R-p53 at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 1 PFU/cell in vitro, the survival rate of EH-GB1 cells was lower than 50%, and that of EH-GB2 cells was lower than 40%, while the survival rate was higher than 90% for BJ human fibroblast cells, demonstrating that SG7605-11R-p53 has potent specific cytotoxicity against GBC cells. The tumor growth was greatly inhibited in nude mice bearing EH-GB2 xenografts when the total dose of SG7605-11R-p53 was 1x109 PFU, and terminal dUTP nick end-labeling (TUNEL) revealed that the apoptotic rate of cancer cells was 66.75±6.702%. Compared with existing gene therapy with long-standing shortcomings, our new system offers an additional option for patients with advanced GBC and other cancers who may not be suitable for chemotherapy, radiotherapy or who are not indicated for surgical treatment.