Saturday, February 7, 2015

Gene Therapy and Brain Cancer in Rats

Here are a few quick facts. Glioma is a deadly form of brain cancer which currently does not have any effective types of treatments, and biodegradable nano particles were recently used in animals to kill the cancer cells. The article brings up a good point that there have been numerous improvements in cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation but there are so many different types of cancers and these treatments are not always effective. In regards to Glioma gene mutations gave made gene therapy difficult to complete. That is until researchers at the John Hopkins University were able to directly deliver a new therapy to the Glioma Cells using nano-particles. This method of transportation is called intracranial convection-enhanced delivery. The nano-particles were made from polymers and filled with "DNA encoding an enzyme, herpes simplex virus type 1 thymidine kinase (HSVtk), which turns a compound with little effect into a potent therapy that kills brain cancer cells"(John Hopkins Medicine 1) The resulting compound is known as ganciclovir and it killed the cancer cells 100% of the time.

One of the added bonuses to these findings is that researchers believe these nano-particles could also deliver anti-tumor genes and could be used to fight against other systematic cancer cells. These findings are amazing but they are not being used for humans yet because more test have to be completed before a clinical trial. Jordan Green, Ph.D, associate professor of biomedical engineering, neurosurgery and ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins believes that the nano particles would be introduced into the human body via surgery on the brain although administering it systematically could be more effective.

We live in an age where new threats to humans and animals arise all the time, yet we continue to find innovative and effective ways to treat or cure whatever comes our way. This is an amazing find which could potentially save many lives.


1 comment:

  1. That is amazing, it may not be a cure but it's great that they're finding alternate treatments for cancer. I wonder if they can load these nanoparticles with other types of enzymes to fight bacterial infections.

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