Gene Therapy That Safely Targets and Kills Tumor Cells Throughout the Body

Interestingness: 3

By Alicia Hurtado, Jen-Chieh Tseng, and Daniel Meruelo. Rejuvenation Research. Spring 2006, 9(1): 36-44. doi:10.1089/rej.2006.9.36.

I've heard about these cancer-killing viruses many times but I've never read one of the papers.

In this one, they injected cells from human ovarian cancer into mice, and after five days they started injecting them with a non-replicating version of the Sindbis virus. They modified the virus to also express green fluorescent protein (GFP) so they could also check that the bits that were green inside the mouse were the bits where in the tumours and not in the healthy tissue or in control mice that weren't injected with cancers. They also tried two other variants adding genes for interleukin-15 and -17 to the infected virus.

They claim that tumour sizes reduced in the places where the virus infected, and lifespan of the mice was extended, especially for the IL-15 and IL-17 versions. They don't show survival curves which is a pity. They also say that they weren't able to clear the tumours.

Their theory for specificity is that the cancer expresses higher amounts of laminin receptor (LAMR) and that the virus binds to it. LAMR is upregulated in many cancers. They tested the theory by blocking LAMR production through siRNA and saw the amount of virus infection drop in those cancers.