Cancer: Fine-tuning cellular suicide

Posted: June 23, 2010
Source: A*STAR

(Nanowerk News) Suicide gene therapy is a cancer treatment strategy that targets tumors with toxic genes, or genes encoding enzymes that produce toxic compounds. However, since restricting suicide gene expression to the tumor is difficult, this approach can damage non-cancerous cells.

Now, Shu Wang of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology of A*STAR, Singapore, and co-workers have successfully treated glioma in the mouse brain, while confining suicide gene expression to the tumor tissue ("Combinatorial Control of Suicide Gene Expression by Tissue-specific Promoter and microRNA Regulation for Cancer Therapy"). They developed a novel approach that uses small nucleic acids called microRNAs, which regulate gene expression by binding to specific target DNA sequences.


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