Patent ID: 8460864

Claim:
A method for identifying a compound that modulates human vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) mRNA translation that is regulated by the untranslated regions (UTRs) of the human VEGF mRNA, said method comprising: (a) contacting a compound with a first human cell engineered to express a first reporter protein translated from a first mRNA transcript comprising a first reporter gene coding sequence operably linked to a first full-length 5′ UTR and a first full-length 3′ UTR of the human VEGF mRNA, wherein the first 5′ UTR is upstream of the first reporter gene coding sequence and the first 3′ UTR is downstream of the first reporter gene coding sequence and, wherein the first reporter gene coding sequence is not the coding sequence of human VEGF; (b) contacting the compound with a second human cell engineered to express a second reporter protein translated from a second mRNA transcript comprising the first reporter gene coding sequence operably linked to a second 5′ UTR and a second 3′ UTR, wherein the second 5′ UTR is upstream of the first reporter Gene coding sequence and the second 3′ UTR is downstream of the first reporter gene coding sequence, and wherein the second 5′ UTR and the second 3′ UTR are each from an mRNA, different than the 5′ UTR and the 3′ UTR of the human VEGF mRNA; and (c) detecting the level of expression of the first and second reporter proteins, wherein (i) an alteration in the level of expression of the first reporter protein in the presence of the compound relative to the level of expression of the first reporter protein in the absence of the compound or the presence of a negative control, and (ii) no alteration in or not a substantially altered level of expression of the second reporter protein in the presence of the compound relative to the level of expression of the second reporter protein in the absence of the compound or the presence of the negative control indicates that the compound modulates human VEGF mRNA translation that is regulated by the UTRs of the human VEGF mRNA.