Targeting serous epithelial ovarian cancer with designer zinc finger transcription factors

Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death among gynecological malignancies. It is usually detected at late stages when the disease is spread through the abdominal cavity in form of ascitic fluids. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop novel therapeutic interventions to target advanced stages of ovarian cancer, particularly metastatic disease. Mammary serine protease inhibitor (Maspin) represents an important metastasis suppressor initially identified in breast cancer. In this work we have generated a sequence-specific zinc finger artificial transcription factor (ATF) to up-regulate the Maspin promoter in aggressive ovarian cancer cell lines, to interrogate the therapeutic potential of Maspin in ovarian cancer. We found that while Maspin was expressed in some primary ovarian tumors, the promoter was epigenetically silenced in cell lines derived from ascites. Transduction of the ATF in MOVCAR 5009 cells derived from ascitic cultures of a TgMISIIR-Tag mouse model of ovarian cancer resulted in tumor cell growth, impaired cell invasion, and severe disruption of actin cytoskeleton. Systemic delivery of lipid-protamine-RNA (LPR) nanoparticles encapsulating a chemically modified ATF mRNA resulted in inhibition of ovarian cancer cell growth in nude mice, accompanied with Maspin re-expression in the treated tumors. Finally, gene expression microarrays of ATF-transduced cells revealed an exceptional potency and specificity for the Maspin promoter. These analyses revealed targets co-regulated with Maspin in human short-term cultures derived from ascitic fluids from ovarian cancer patients, such as TSPAN12, which could mediate the anti-metastatic phenotype of the ATF. Our work outlined the first targeted, non-viral delivery of designer ATFs into tumors with potential application in clinical trials for metastatic ovarian cancers. reference X sample with 6 samples