Telomerase is closely related to tumor, and hTERT is the rate-limiting factor for telomerase activity. The transcription and expression of hTERT is determined by hTERT promoter, which has the ability of anchoring telomerase positive cells. RNA interference (RNAi) has been potentially used in the functional genomics and gene therapy recently. However, the limitations of RNAi uncertain interference and safety hamper its wide applications. To overcome these limitations, we constructed shRNA vectors harboring either U6 promoter or chimera hTERT/U6 promoter aiming at EGFP and hTERT genes (shRNA-EGFP-U6, shRNA-EGFP-hTERT/U6, shRNA-hTERT-U6 and shRNA-hTERT-hTERT/U6), to suppress the expression of GFP and hTERT in telomerase negative human normal fibroblast HELF cells and telomerase positive human hepatocarcinoma SMMC-7721 and HepG2 cells, respectively. HELF-EGFP and SMMC-7721-EGFP cells stably expressing EGFP or hTERT were constructed. GFP expression was inhibited in both HELF-EGFP and SMMC-7721-EGFP cells expressing shRNA-EGFP-U6. Further results showed that GFP expression was suppressed only in telomerase positive SMMC-7721 cells and HepG2 cells, but not in telomerase negative HELF cells expressing shRNA-EGFP-hTERT/U6. Further results found that hTERT expression was effectively inhibited from liver cancer cells expressing shRNA-hTERT-U6 or shRNA-hTERT-hTERT/U6 both in vitro and in vivo. Our study illustrates the tumor-targeted efficiency of shRNA vectors harboring chimera hTERT/U6 promoter in telomerase positive cells, which will benefit tumor therapy.

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