GENE THERAPY FOR CANCER TREATMENT

GENE THERAPY FOR CANCER TREATMENT SUMMARY

Gene transfer is a new treatment modality that introduces new genes into a cancerous cell or the 

surrounding tissue to cause cell death or slow the growth of the cancer. Cancer gene therapy 

represents one of the most rapidly developing problems in pre-clinical and clinical cancer research. 

Now a day, viral, non-viral and bacterial vector methods of gene transfer are used either in vivo or 

ex vivo/invitro. However, the new technologies of gene therapy (such as pro-drug activating 

suicide gene therapy, anti- angiogenic gene therapy, oncolytic viro therapy, gene therapy-based 

immune modulation, correction/compensation of gene defects, and genetic manipulation of 

apoptotic and tumor invasion pathways) were implemented in most civilized countries, the disease 

is still devastating the developing countries like Ethiopia and it was aimed to review types, 

approaches and techniques of gene therapy for cancer treatment and to give information about 

gene therapy. Immunotherapy uses genetically modified cells and viral particles to stimulate the 

immune system to destroy cancer cells. The success of gene therapy is limited by ineffective 

delivery systems and possible risk of infecting normal cells. Collected information from different 

gene therapy trials have been uniformly indicates as its safety. Many researchers were give

information about the future of cancer treatments based on the specific gene changes found in 

cancer cells, and this remains a very active area of research for the coming century. As conclusion 

cancer is the disease which mostly affecting the world and has no other treatment option without 

gene therapy. Teaching people about gene therapy, protecting animal from predisposing factors 

and the establishment of many research area were mentioned as direction for future.

Key Words: Cancer, Gene therapy, Immunotherapy, Suicide gene, viral vector