Pazarentzos Evangelos, Mazarakis Nicholas D
University of California-San Francisco (UCSF), 600 16th st, Genentech Hall, San Francisco, CA, 94158, USA.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2014;818:255-80. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4471-6458-6_13.
Gene therapy vectors are among the treatments currently used to treat malignant tumors. Gene therapy vectors use a specific therapeutic transgene that causes death in cancer cells. In early attempts at gene therapy, therapeutic transgenes were driven by non-specific vectors which induced toxicity to normal cells in addition to the cancer cells. Recently, novel cancer specific viral vectors have been developed that target cancer cells leaving normal cells unharmed. Here we review such cancer specific gene therapy systems currently used in the treatment of cancer and discuss the major challenges and future directions in this field.
基因治疗载体是目前用于治疗恶性肿瘤的治疗手段之一。基因治疗载体使用特定的治疗性转基因，该转基因可导致癌细胞死亡。在基因治疗的早期尝试中，治疗性转基因由非特异性载体驱动，这些载体除了对癌细胞产生毒性外，还会对正常细胞产生毒性。最近，已经开发出新型的癌症特异性病毒载体，其靶向癌细胞而不会伤害正常细胞。在此，我们综述目前用于癌症治疗的此类癌症特异性基因治疗系统，并讨论该领域的主要挑战和未来方向。
