Cancer gene therapy:: Strategies and clinical trials

In recent years, great advances have been made in developing novel therapeutic systems based on the introduction of genetic material into damaged cells and designed to correct the error underlying the disease or destroy the pathological cell. One of the main applications of this new approach, known as gene therapy, is the treatment of malignant pathological tumours, in which classic treatments with radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery are only palliative. Strategies developed to date include the use of suicide genes, immunity-enhancing genes, apoptosis-inducing genes or genes that inhibit the neovascularization of the tumour, and the blocking of mutated tumour suppressor genes or their restoration in the tumour cell. The effectiveness shown in cell culture and animal experiments and some promising results in clinical trials suggest that gene therapy will help to improve the prognosis of cancer patients and may become the treatment of choice.