Gene therapy for high grade gliomas

Abstract
High grade gliomas in adults are devastating diseases, with very poor survival despite their lack of distant metastases. Local treatments, such as surgical resection and stereotactic radiosurgery, have been most successful, whereas systemic therapy (for example, chemotherapy and immunotherapy) have been rather disappointing. Several gene therapy systems have been successful in controlling or eradicating these tumours in animal models and are now being tested as a logical addition to current clinical management. This review describes the gene therapy clinical protocols that have been completed or that are ongoing for human gliomas. These include the prodrug activating system, herpes simplex thymidine kinase (HSVtk)/ganciclovir (GCV), utilising either retrovirus vector producer cells or adenovirus vectors; adenovirus mediated p53 gene transfer; adenovirus mediated IFN-β gene transfer and oncolytic herpes virus and adenovirus vectors. To date, all of the clinical studies have used direct injection of the vec...

This publication has 47 references indexed in Scilit: