DEVELOPMENT OF CANCER TREATMENTS- MOVEMENT FROM

CANCER GENE THERAPY TO OTHER FORMS OF CANCER

TREATMENT
Cancer is one of the highest leading cases of deaths or mortalities although there has been
improvements to medicinal approaches for cancer treatment. Although this highlights the
difficulties in creating new, successful treatments for cancer it also stresses on the short comings
of conventional approaches.
The development of the new therapies must have increased efficiency while battling against the
toxicity of chemotherapy which decrease the effectiveness. Cancer Gene therapy delivers a better
treatment method for patients while concentrating on specific pathways.
Over the past 10 years there has been upgrades in sequencing technology which has allowed the
revelation of uncommon or unusual genes and pathways involved in tumourigenesis or formation
of tumours, which present itself as suitable targets for gene and cellular therapies.
So this discovery allows for use of new approaches such as siRNA delivery to disrupt pathways
or delivery of gene coding for a pro-apototic inducer which causes tumour cells to self-destruct.
These new approaches will improve efficiency of cancer gene therapy as well as reduce the
radioactive effects.
Immunotherapy is another strategy for treating cancer that is being recognized more and more.
Cancer immunotherapy tries to stimulate the immune system to reject and destroy tumours. The
anatomy of tumours are also being examined through another approach called Gene modified Tcell therapy to determine how to battle cancerous tumours.
New ways such as use of nanomaterials, hybrid bacterial viruses and novel engineering of cellbased carriers has allowed for targeted gene delivery, enhanced gene expression and evasion of
clearance to be developed which are all methods of gene therapy.
The main goal of eradicating radioactive toxicity and decreasing the amounts of deaths of cancer
treatment can be achieved by also using tissue-specific targeting.
By using gene therapy, lower concentrations can be used in chemotherapy or radiation therapy
since it acts as an agent which increases the antigenic response. This decreases the exposure to
toxicity which increases the effectiveness of the therapeutic treatments.

However gene therapy also has its limitations since it requires the delivery of a corrective gene to
every cancer cell which is a hefty or demanding task.
So apart from gene therapy other strategies such as immunotherapy and cellular therapy can be
used also to target cancerous tumours.

SOURCES:
ARTICLE:
S.K Libutti, Cancer Gene Therapy (2014) 21, 1; 2014 Nature America, Inc.,
http://www.nature.com/cgt/journal/v21/n1/pdf/cgt201380a.pdf
WEBSITE:
American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy,http://www.asgct.org/general-public/educationalresources/gene-therapy-and-cell-therapy-for-diseases/cancer-gene-and-cell-therapy