First Gene Therapy Study in Human Salivary Gland Shows Promise

Gene therapy has been performed on human salivary gland recently by scientists. In recent news through Science Daily there has been information reported on this.  This was done in order to prevent dryness of the mouth through those whom have battled cancer. Aquaporin-1 has great success in being transferred into cancer survivors. These people are suffering from chronic dry mouth. The Aquaporin-1 has a protein that naturally produces “pore-like” water channels in the membranes of the cells. This process helps move fluid like when the salivary gland cells secrete saliva into the mouth.

[caption id="attachment_5712" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Aquaporin Family"][/caption]

Salivary glands are an ideal place for gene therapy only due to the process the gene goes through. Once the gene enters the mouth there is a straight way for the gene to transfer into the bloodstream. It is a one way action making the process easy and successful in this situation. There is also the risk of since it is a one way pathway, there can also be types of mutations possibly. Head and neck cancer survivors have been a major interest in this gene therapy and one observation was made throughout this. Those patients who went through the cancer also were also introduced to radiation.  This has been a common process in most cancer patients, but in this case it left consequences for those with head and neck cancers. After the radiation a lot of the tumors were shrunk, unfortunately, this also damaged the close by salivary glands. Due to this it became much more difficult to secrete saliva. This resulted into difficulty for survivors of cancer to drink, swallow, infections, along with other pain.

[caption id="attachment_5713" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="A single human aquaporin-1 channel facilitates water transport at a rate of roughly 3 billion water molecules per second. Such transport appears to be bidirectional, in accordance with the prevailing osmotic gradient. "][/caption]

The scientists injected a single-dose of the Aquaporin-1 gene directly onto eleven people. Out of the eleven people five people had increased levels of saliva. Not only did they have increased levels of saliva but also had a sense of moisture and lubrication in their mouths. This has given a lot of hope for cancer survivors now. Hopefully with a lot of more research done there can be more research done to increase the levels of the people who did not successfully retain the gene.