Gene therapy shield for cancer treatment
March 2006Researchers at the University’s Paterson Institute for Cancer Research, funded by Cancer Research UK, have developed an approach which could shield cancer patients’ healthy stem cells of during radiotherapy - enabling stronger doses to be administered safely.
Many of the damaging side-effects of radiotherapy are due to the death of bone-marrow cells, which produce the blood cells vital for life. Radiation generates highly reactive ‘free radical’ chemicals inside the body which damage the DNA in cells, and if the cell cannot repair the damage it dies. This makes radiation an effective way of killing cancer cells, but also a significant threat to normal, healthy cells.
However, cells have developed their own way of protecting against this sort of damage. A family of molecules called superoxide dismutases (SOD) can convert some free radicals into hydrogen peroxide, which can then be disposed of harmlessly by the cell.
In a report published in the Journal of Gene Medicine*, the team described the revolutionary technique it has developed to make marrow stem cells produce more SOD2**, a member of the SOD family. This reduced the effects of radiation treatment on healthy bone-marrow stem cells in the lab, and the team is now looking to develop the principle further.
Dr Tom Southgate said: “The extra gene bestowed significant protection from the unwanted side-effects of radiation, and we hope that our work will eventually lead to a pre-treatment to protect bone marrow in this way. This would allow doctors to use higher doses of radioactive components, such as newer, more-effective treatments which take radioactive substances straight to cancer cells.
“There is still a great deal of work to be done before we can start trying it in patients, but the prospects are potentially very exciting.”
*Radioprotective gene therapy through retroviral expression of manganese superoxide dismutase. Journal of Gene Medicine 2006: 8 DOI: 10.1002/jgm.890. Victoria Sheard, Thomas D Southgate, Michael D Milsom, Rob Mairs, Marie Boyd and Leslie J Faribairn.
** SOD2: Superoxide dismutase 2
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