Tyrosinase, an enzyme with specificity for malignant melanoma, is regulated by the human tyrosinase promoter. Transgenes that are driven by this promoter transduce melanoma cells and have the potential to induce tumor regression. Similarly, a human tyrosinase promoter construct linked to two enhancer elements causes high-level, melanoma-specific expression of a reporter gene in transient transfection assays. The murine tyrosinase promoter-enhancer expression cassette expressed by an Adv vector has been shown to maintain transcriptional specificity for pigment cell lineages, especially human melanoma cell lines.
