Inhibition of hepatitis B virus X gene expression by 10-23 DNAzymes》.pdfVIP

Antiviral Research 72 (2006) 190–196 Inhibition of hepatitis B virus X gene expression by 10-23 DNAzymes Wei Hou 1, Qin Ni 1, Jianer Wo ∗, Minwei Li, Kezhou Liu, Liwei Chen, Zhongrong Hu, Ronghua Liu, Minjun Hu Key Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, Ministry of Public Health of China, Institute of Infectious Diseases, First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medical Sciences, Zhejiang University, Qingchun Road 79, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310003, China Received 29 December 2005; accepted 4 July 2006 Abstract The X protein (HBx) of human hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a transcriptional activator protein. The HBx protein plays an important role in viral replication in HBV infected cells and the liver diseases including hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Therefore, the repression of HBx gene expression by 10-23 DNAzymes might be a good way to inhibit HBV replication and counteract HBV-related liver diseases. We designed three 10-23 DNAzymes with different substrate-recognition domains. When each of the 10-23 DNAzymes were cotransfected into human AD293 cells with HBx-EGFP expression plasmid, they could all reduce the level of HBx mRNA as well as the HBx-EGFP protein. These results suggest that the 10-23 DNAzymes might be used for gene therapy of liver diseases caused by HBV. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: 10-23 DNAzyme; HBV; HBx; Inhibition; Gene expression 1. Introduction Therefore, the specific repression of HBx gene expression may be a good strategy to block the progression of liver diseases Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is an inf