Antineoplastic effect of intracellular expression of a single-chain antibody directed against type IV collagenase.

It has been shown that the type IV collagenase with its two subtypes, 72 kDa/ MMP-2 and 92 kDa/MMP-9, plays an important role in tumor invasion and metastasis formation that occur through a mechanism of proteolytic degradation of collagen IV in the basement membrane. One possible method to specifically inhibit the function of the targeted protein of a cell is to express intracellular antibody combining site that can block the function or prevent the expression of the targeted molecule. Accordingly, intracellular antibodies against type IV collagenase may have a therapeutic use against tumor invasion and metastasis. As described in our previous reports, an anti-type IV collagenase monoclonal antibody (3D6) was obtained using the hybridoma approach, and its functional single-chain Fv fragment (scFv) named M97 was constructed based on recombinant phage display techniques. In this study, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-retained scFv antibody fragment was used to inhibit the function of type IV collagenase. For expression in mammalian cells, the assembled scFv M97 gene with ER retention signal encoding 6 additional amino acid (SEKDEL) was reamplified by PCR. The amplified fragments were cloned into the pcDNA3.1 vector containing the CMV early-intermediate promoter/enhancer. The resulting plasmid was sequenced and then introduced by the lipofectamine method into PG cells, a highly metastatic human lung cancer cell line and G418-resistant cells were obtained by G418 selection. After transfection, the M97 mRNA expression was observed and the type IV collagenase expression was downregulated significantly as measured by ELISA. The biological behavior of PG cells, such as the ability of in vitro invasion of colony formation on soft agar through Matrigel, were also inhibited by scFv M97 transfection. The results indicate that intracellular antibody technology represents a novel and efficient way to selectively abrogate the activity of type IV collagenase, at least in vitro. We are presently exploring the efficacy of this approach in a xenograft model of human lung cancer.