CMV-PEA-15

**CMV-PEA-15** is a gene therapy construct consisting of the human PEA-15 (phosphoprotein enriched in astrocytes 15) cDNA delivered under control of a cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter as a non-viral plasmid DNA formulation. This construct is designed to drive the overexpression of PEA-15, a protein with known pro-apoptotic and anti-proliferative properties, in transfected cells. Mechanistically, CMV-PEA-15 sequesters phosphorylated ERK (extracellular signal-regulated kinase) in the cytoplasm, thereby inhibiting downstream nuclear transcription factors Elk-1 and AP-1, resulting in increased apoptosis (mediated by cleaved caspase 3 and 7 activation) and reduced tumor cell proliferation. It has demonstrated anti-tumor efficacy in preclinical models of breast cancer, where it induces apoptosis in both cancer and normal cells, though with higher toxicity versus a cancer-specific vector, T-VISA-PEA-15. The developer is an academic/laboratory group, not a pharmaceutical company, and it is an experimental research tool rather than a marketed pharmaceutical product[2].