pDRIVE-Survivin

Survivin promoter in pDRIVE expression plasmid

Survivin, a member of the IAP (inhibitor of apoptosis) gene family, is expressed during embryonic and fetal development but is undetectable in normal adult tissues.

Survivin plays an important role in the growth and progression of a variety of cancers and was shown to be overexpressed in most common human cancers.

Survivin expression is regulated at the transcriptional level. Analysis of the 5’ flanking region of the survivin gene revealed the presence of a TATA-less promoter containing a canonical CpG island of approximately 250 nt and several Sp1 sites [1]. This proximal promoter was used to confer a tumor-specific expression of the luciferase gene in vitro and in vivo [2]. The activity of the survivin promoter is upregulated by hypoxia in tumor cells [3].

References:

1. Li F. & Altieri DC. 1999. Transcriptional analysis of human survivin gene expression. Biochem J. 344 Pt 2:305-11.
2. Zhu ZB. et al., 2004. Transcriptional targeting of tumors with a novel tumor-specific survivin promoter. Cancer Gene Ther. 11(4):256-62.
3. Yang L. et al., 2004. Tumor-specific gene expression using the survivin promoter is further increased by hypoxia. Gene Ther. 11(15):1215-23.