NOTCH RECEPTORS WITH ZINC FINGER-CONTAINING TRANSCRIPTIONAL EFFECTOR

摘要

The present disclosure generally relates to, inter alia, a new class of chimeric Notch receptors containing a synthetic zinc finger transcriptional effector (synZTE) module, engineered to modulate gene expression and cellular activities in a ligand-dependent manner. The new Notch receptors surprisingly retain the ability to transduce signals in response to ligand binding despite that the Notch extracellular subunit (NEC), which includes the negative regulatory region (NRR) previously believed to be essential for the functioning of Notch receptors, is partly or completely deleted. In addition, the synZTE is designed to bind orthogonal DNA target sequences in target organisms which in turn facilitates precise regulation of therapeutic gene expression with minimal off-target activity. Also provided are compositions and methods useful for producing such receptors, nucleic acids encoding same, host cells genetically modified with the nucleic acids, as well as methods for modulating an activity of a cell and/or for the treatment of various health conditions such as cancers.