Adenoviral-delivered HE4-HSV-tk sensitizes ovarian cancer cells to ganciclovir.

Ovarian cancer (OC) is most often contained within the peritoneal cavity, making it an ideal disease for adenoviral-delivered gene therapies. In effort to develop a safe and effective gene therapy for OC, we created a replication deficient adenovirus bearing the herpes simplex thymidine kinase (HSV-tk) gene under direction of the tumor specific promoter human epididymis protein 4 (HE4). The purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of our adenoviral construct to transduce OC cells and mediate transgene expression of HSV-tk, thereby sensitizing OC to the pro-drug ganciclovir.