Cancer Gene Therapies Becoming Very Impressive

(From EurekAlert!). It seems as though we will have the chance to see whether widespread access to efficient therapies for cancer is good enough to ensure the healthy life extension brought about by other advances in medicine. The work presently taking place in the lab is fairly impressive: researchers "designed a novel viral-based gene therapy they say blasts through a body, targeting both primary and distant tumors, while leaving normal cells untouched. In the 15 mice they tested, injections of the therapy in tumors on one side of the mouse eliminated those cancers as well as tumors on the other side of the animal's body, producing a cure in all of the mice. This study tested this 'dual cancer-specific targeting strategy' with aggressive therapy resistant prostate cancer. The researchers have also shown it works in animals with breast, and melanoma tumors. ... The beauty of this approach is that two methods are being used to destroy a tumor. The virus we designed replicates within a tumor, and at the same time produces a massive amount of a cancer killing compound. Either action alone is damaging and potentially deadly, but together they are lethal."

Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-04/aafc-gtc041007.php

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