Suicide gene therapy against cancer

Abstract

Cancers are a large family of diseases with the highest mortality rate worldwide. Conventional therapies such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy are not efficient in all cases and have important side effects. To solve it, suicide gene therapy can be used. This therapy consists on inducing cell death of cancer cells due to the introduction of a gene. There are three types of this therapy: introduction of a gene encoding generally a bacterial enzyme that actives a prodrug, introduction of a gene encoding a toxin or introduction of a proapoptotic gene. The expression of the targeted gene in tumor cells is produced by using tumor-specific promoters and target vectors. Using those three gene suicide therapies many hallmarks in the field were reached, achieving successful clinical trials and products approved to be used in China (gendicine), achieving apoptosis of tumor cells in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, several improvements on these techniques were developed due to the mutation of the enzymes and toxins, modification of prodrugs and search of new more active enzymes, toxins and genes, between others. Regardless, further research on this area is needed to guarantee the efficiency of this state-of-the-art therapy and its effectiveness.