ADENOVIRAL TRANSDUCTION EFFICIENCY PARTLY CORRELATES WITH EXPRESSION LEVELS OF INTEGRIN ALPHA-V-BETA-5, BUT NOT ALPHA-V-BETA-3 IN HUMAN GASTRIC-CARCINOMA CELLS

Adenovirus has attracted much attention as a vector for gene therapy. Integrin alpha v beta 3 and alpha v beta 5 mediate adenovirus internal ization into cells. We examined adenoviral transduction efficiency and expression of integrin alpha v beta 3 and alpha v beta 5 in 9 human g astric carcinoma cell lines. The percentage of beta-gal-positive cells was more than 85% 3 days after infection with recombinant adenovirus carrying the bacterial LacZ gene (AxCALacZ) at a dose of 25 MOI in 7 c ell lines and the transduction efficiency was 32 and 42% in HSC-39 and MKN-28 cells, respectively. Adenoviral transduction efficiency did no t correlate with the histological cell types. Flow cytometric analysis revealed relatively high expression of integrin alpha v beta 5 in MKN -28 and OCUM-2M cells, followed by MKN-1, MKN-7, MKN-45, MKN-74, TMK-1 and KATO-III cells. HSC-39 cells minimally expressed integrin alpha v beta 5. On the other hand, integrin alpha v beta 3 was expressed only in MKN-1 cells. These results suggest that the adenovirus vector migh t be useful for gene transduction into human gastric carcinoma cells a nd the transduction efficiency partly correlates with the expression l evels of integrin alpha v beta 5 but not integrin alpha v beta 3.