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Research from Taipei Veterans General Hospital in cancer gene therapy provides new insights
December 10th, 2007
2007 DEC 10 -- "Peritoneal carcinomatosis of intraabdominal malignancies, such as pancreatic, ovarian, gastric, and colorectal cancers, represents an unmet medical need as conventional cancer treatments rarely eliminate these tumors. Satisfactory treatment for either peritoneally disseminated tumors or prevention of local recurrence after surgery is yet to be developed," investigators in Taipei, Taiwan report. "To improve the efficacy of novel strategies against peritoneal metastasis, a sensitive, and less invasive model is needed to scrutinize the in vivo tumor growth and response to experimental therapeutics. To study this we intraperitoneally inoculated CT-26 stably expressing luciferase (CT-26-Luc) to mimic tumor spreading within the abdomen. Bioluminescent signals emitted from the living experimental mice correlate well with the injected cell numbers as well as the weights of dissected tumors. Since a nonviral cationic liposome coupled mutant pro-apoptotic gene, Bik(T33D/S35D) (BikDD), was previously shown to have potent anti-cancer effects on an orthotopic breast cancer animal model (Li et al., Cancer Res 63(22):7630-7633, 2003), we evaluated the inhibitory effect of BikDD on the growth kinetics of intraperitoneally inoculated CT-26-Luc. We found that intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection of liposome coupled BikDD suppressed the expansion of CT-26-Luc and prolonged life span of experimental mice," wrote K.L. Lan and colleagues, Taipei Veterans General Hospital. The researchers concluded: "These results suggest a therapeutic effect of BikDD gene therapy on peritoneal carcinomatosis of colon cancer." Lan and colleagues published their study in Clinical & Experimental Metastasis (Research from Taipei Veterans General Hospital in cancer gene therapy provides new insights. Clinical & Experimental Metastasis, 2007;24(6):461-470). For additional information, contact K.H. Lan, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Dept. of Medical, Division Gastroenterology, 201 Sec 2 Shih Pai Rd., Taipei 112, Taiwan. The publisher of the journal Clinical & Experimental Metastasis can be contacted at: Springer, Van Godewijckstraat 30, 3311 Gz Dordrecht, Netherlands. Keywords: Taiwan, Taipei, Apoptosis, Biotechnology, Cancer Gene Therapy, Colon Cancer, Colon Carcinoma, Colorectal, Drug Development, Experimental Metastasis, Experimental Therapeutics, Experimental Therapies, Gastroenterology, Oncology, Pancreas, Pharmaceuticals, Surgery, Treatment, Taipei Veterans General Hospital. This article was prepared by Biotech Business Week editors from staff and other reports. Copyright 2007, Biotech Business Week via NewsRx.com.
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