Tumor Specific Promoters are active specifically in tumor cells, such as hepatocellular carcinoma, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, melanocytes...
Tumor Specific Promoters are available as native or composite promoter:
- Native promoters, also called minimal promoters, consist of a single fragment from the 5’ region of a given gene. Each of them comprises a core promoter and its natural 5’UTR. In some cases, the 5’UTR contains an intron.
- Composite promoters combine promoter elements of different origins or were generated by assembling a distal enhancer with a minimal promoter of the same origin.
In each pDRIVE, the promoter drives the expression of a reporter gene to facilitate the evaluation of its activity. Three different reporter genes are available in two different backbones: LacZ reporter gene in pDRIVE, secreted embryonic alkaline phosphatase (SEAP) or Lucia secreted luciferase reporter gene in pDRIVE5.