Patent ID: 9322034
Filing Date: 2016-04-26
CPC Classification: A01K,A61K,C07K,C12N,C12Q,G01N

Claim Text:
1. A nucleic acid expression cassette expressible in mammalian cells, wherein the expression cassette comprises the following elements in a 5′ to 3′ direction: at least one transcriptional effector sequence, a translational regulatory (TR) element encoding an mRNA molecule that is selectively translated in stressed and/or dying cells, wherein the TR element is the sequence of SEQ ID NO: 1 or the sequence of SEQ ID NO: 2, a nucleotide sequence operably linked to the TR element, that is an open reading frame (ORF) sequence and encodes a polypeptide or a fragment thereof and is co-translated with the TR element, and a polyadenylation sequence, wherein selectively translated in stressed and/or dying cells means that the mRNA translation activity is observed in more than 95% of any cell line transformed with the expression cassette at the peak of translation activity following treatment with an acute toxic agent that induces cell stress and/or death, and that translational levels of the ORF of the expression cassette rise to at least 50% of expression levels of the same ORF when transcribed and translated from the same expression cassette lacking an operably linked TR element following treatment with the acute toxic agent.