Department of Gastroenterological Surgery, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Okayama 700-8558, Japan.
Int J Mol Med. 2010 Jan;25(1):3-10.
Gene therapy and virotherapy are among the approaches currently used to treat malignant tumors. Gene therapy and virotherapy use a specific therapeutic gene that causes death in cancer cells. In early attempts at gene therapy, therapeutic genes were driven by ubiquitous promoters such as the CMV promoter, which induce non-specific toxicity to normal cells and tissues in addition to the cancer cells. Recently, novel cancer- and/or tissue-specific promoter systems have been developed to target cancer cells but not normal cells including stem cells. In this review, we describe cancer and/or tissue-specific gene therapy systems for the treatment of cancer. In particular, we will discuss three systems for gene therapy and virotherapy: i) tissue-specific promoter systems, ii) cancer-specific promoter systems, and iii) oncolytic virotherapy. We will also discuss the major challenges of cancer-targeting vector systems and future directions in this area.
基因治疗和病毒治疗是目前用于治疗恶性肿瘤的方法之一。基因治疗和病毒治疗使用一种特定的治疗基因，该基因会导致癌细胞死亡。在早期的基因治疗尝试中，治疗基因由普遍存在的启动子（如 CMV 启动子）驱动，除了癌细胞外，还会对正常细胞和组织产生非特异性毒性。最近，已经开发出了新型的癌症和/或组织特异性启动子系统，以靶向癌细胞而不是正常细胞，包括干细胞。在这篇综述中，我们描述了用于治疗癌症的癌症和/或组织特异性基因治疗系统。特别是，我们将讨论三种基因治疗和病毒治疗系统：i）组织特异性启动子系统，ii）癌症特异性启动子系统，和 iii）溶瘤病毒治疗。我们还将讨论癌症靶向载体系统的主要挑战和该领域的未来发展方向。
