According to one embodiment of the present invention, a self regulating DNA non-viral expression vector is provided that allows after non-viral ex vivo gene therapy for the controlled and regulable inflammation-specific expression of anti-inflammatory polypeptide gene products in the recipient's joint tissues. The inventive gene expression construct comprises a RNA polymerase promoter sequence that is induced by inflammation and which is operable in a mammalian cell, a transcribed sequence under the control of said promoter sequence, encoding a transcription product that has the ability to modulate the inflammatory response, and/or encoding the mRNA for a polypeptide gene product that has the ability to modulate the inflammatory response, whereby the inflammatory response is modulated by a negative feed back response of said gene product on said promoter sequence.
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