Establishment of cancer virotherapy and imaging system targeting cancer stem cells in gynecologic cancer.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

We have established telomerase-specific replication-selective adenoviruses (TRAD) which can replicate only in telomerase activated cells. In the present study, we assessed the effectiveness of TRAD to the candidates of cancer stem cells in gynecologic cancer.We have also developed a detection system for circulating tumor cells (CTCs) using GFP expressing TRAD. CTCs were detected in 40% of patients with gynecological malignancies. There was no significant correlation between CTC counts and tumor types or known clinicopathological factors, such as clinical stage and histological type. The CTCs rapidly vanished after surgery or chemotherapy in most patients whose treatments were effective. In contrast, the persistence of CTCs even after treatments was tightly associated with poor response to the treatments (P<0.005).