Yonsei Med J.  2003 Feb;44(1):58-64. 10.3349/ymj.2003.44.1.58.

Anti-HER2/neu Peptide Producing Vector System for Biologic Therapy - Is It Possible to Mass-produce the Peptide?

• Park BW
• Kim KS
• Heo MK
• Lee KS
• Kim EK
• Kim KS

• KMID: 1719070
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3349/ymj.2003.44.1.58

Abstract

A humanized monoclonal antibody against HER2 has been using in a clinical setting and has been shown to possess therapeutic properties. A mimetic peptide against HER2 was also reported to bind to the HER2 receptor with some therapeutic potential. Based on a previous report and the sequence of Herceptin, we designed oligonucleotides of anti-HER2 mimetic peptides, named V2 and V3 peptides, in order to develop a peptide- producing vector system for biologic therapy against HER2- overexpressing cancers. We also adopted the sequence of a previously reported mimetic peptide, V1 (Park BW et al. Nat. Biotechnol, 2000, 18: 194-198), as a reference peptide. We examined the effects of the V2 and V3 peptides against the HER2-overexpressing cell lines, SK-BR-3 and T6-17. Transient transfection of the construct expressing V1 and V2 inhibited cell proliferation in HER2-overexpressing cell lines by 20 - 30%, but had no effect on the HER2-negative NIH3T3 cells. The proliferation inhibition shown by V2 was slightly better than that shown by V1. Recombinant peptides V2 and V3 were produced on a large scale in an E. coli system, and the V2 peptide showed anti-HER2-specific tumor cell proliferation inhibition of 10% to 30%. Current results suggest that anti-HER2 mimetic peptides, overexpressed by a constitutive promoter or produced in an E. coli system, could specifically inhibit the proliferation of HER2-expressing cancer cells. Further efforts to augment the biologic specificity and efficacy and to develop new technologies for the purification of the peptide from the E coli system are needed.

Keyword

HER2/neu; mimetic peptide; biologic therapy

MeSH Terms

Amino Acid Sequence
Animals
Cell Division/drug effects
Cell Line
Mice
Oligopeptides/chemical synthesis/pharmacology
Peptide Fragments/*chemical synthesis/*pharmacology
Receptor, erbB-2/*chemistry
Recombinant Proteins/chemical synthesis/pharmacology
Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
*Technology, Pharmaceutical
Transfection