Gene therapy provides a number of potential treatments that could be applied in clinic to prevent deaths from
cancer. However, the transfer of gene therapy to the clinical application has proven difficult because many problems remain to be solved concerning the transfection efficiency, target specificity, and safety issues. To overcome these barriers, a
peptide-based vector, K(12)H(6)V(8)SSQHWSYKLRP (KHV-
LHRH) that comprises four functional blocks, is studied in this work for the targeted delivery of a model gene
drug to
cancer cells. KHV-
LHRH peptide, which contains a
luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (
LHRH) sequence, can specifically target
cancer cells expressing
LHRH receptors. The gene expression, cytotoxicity, and cellular uptake mediated by this vector were evaluated against MCF-7 human
breast cancer cells (
LHRH-receptor-positive) and SKOV-3 human ovarian
carcinoma cells (
LHRH-receptor-negative) and compared to a
peptide vector (K(12)H(6)V(8)) (KHV) without the
LHRH ligand and poly(
ethylenimine) (PEI). The results showed that KHV-
LHRH enhanced the
DNA internalization and induced significantly higher gene expression than KHV in
LHRH-receptor-positive MCF-7 cells. Also, the
peptide-based vectors had low cytotoxicity compared to that of PEI. The high specificity and transfection efficiency of the integrated
peptide-based vector make it a very promising material for targeted gene delivery in
cancer therapy.