Somatic gene therapy to suppress secondary cataract formation following eye surgery

Abstract

A replication-defective recombinant virus, preferably an adenovirus that lacks E1a, E1b and E4 ORF 6, capable of infecting an eye and containing a ORF encoding a protein that when expressed in lens epithelial cells of an eye, suppresses, at the level of the germinative epithelium of the lens of the eye, cellular proliferation which is stimulated by eye surgery and which would otherwise result in secondary cataract formation in the eye is disclosed. The ORF, to be expressed, is under the control of a promoter sequence which is expressly exclusively in human lens epithelial cells. The preferred ORFs, to be expressed, include a non-phosphorylatable retinoblastoma ORF, a dominant negative mutant of a human RAS ORF and a Herpes thymidine kinase ORF. The preferred promoter sequences include: a) a promoter of a human Major Intrinsic Protein gene, particularly from −259 nt to +34 nt, b) a promoter of a human &bgr; crystallin gene, particularly from −345 nt to +45 nt, and especially c) the promoter of the Major Intrinsic Protein gene or &bgr; crystallin gene or portions thereof, in combination with elements of the promoter of the rat Early Growth Response-1 gene, from −518 nt to −236 nt. Use of the recombinant virus for the treatment of an eye, undergoing eye (e.g. cataract) surgery, in order to reduce the incidence of cellular proliferation in the eye following the surgery, and thereby to prevent the formation of secondary cataracts is disclosed.