[An efficient tool for the construction of multiple-cistronic vectors: FMDV 2A]

Recently, cancer therapy with mutiple genes has been attached with great attention. However, at present there is no efficient tool to construct multiple-cistrons. The large sizes and the imbalance in expression of most traditional tools, such as ribosome entry sites (IRESes),greatly block their wide employment in the construction of multiple cistronic gene therapy vectors. The self-cleaving peptide 2A from foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) has a very small size, and more importantly, high cleavage activity in artifical bicistron, which bring new hope for mutiple genes therapy stategy. In this article, the characteristics and cleavage activities of FMDV 2A will be elucidated,and we further outline its applications in cancer gene therapy.