Transcriptional targeting in the airway using novel gene regulatory elements

The delivery of cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) to airway epithelia is a goal of many gene therapy strategies to treat cystic fibrosis. Because the native regulatory elements of the CFTR are not well characterized, the development of vectors with heterologous promoters of varying strengths and specificity would aid in our selection of optimal reagents for the appropriate expression of the vector-delivered CFTR gene. Here we contrasted the performance of several novel gene-regulatory elements. Based on airway expression analysis, we selected putative regulatory elements from BPIFA1 and WDR65 to investigate. In addition, we selected a human CFTR promoter region (∼ 2 kb upstream of the human CFTR transcription start site) to study. Using feline immunodeficiency virus vectors containing the candidate elements driving firefly luciferase, we transduced murine nasal epithelia in vivo. Luciferase expression persisted for 30 weeks, which was the duration of the experiment. Furthermore, when the nasal epithelium was ablated using the detergent polidocanol, the mice showed a transient loss of luciferase expression that returned 2 weeks after administration, suggesting that our vectors transduced a progenitor cell population. Importantly, the hWDR65 element drove sufficient CFTR expression to correct the anion transport defect in CFTR-null epithelia. These results will guide the development of optimal vectors for sufficient, sustained CFTR expression in airway epithelia.