Hybrid prokaryotic-eukaryotic vectors for targeted gene delivery to brain tumours in animal models

我们的目标是开发一种治疗人类胶质母细胞瘤的新策略。这些脑瘤是最致命的恶性肿瘤之一。尽管在神经外科、放疗和化疗方面取得了进展，但这些肿瘤的治疗进展甚微。因此，迫切需要新的治疗策略。基因治疗是一种很有吸引力的癌症治疗方法。胶质母细胞瘤是癌症基因治疗的最早目标之一，但由于治疗基因进入肿瘤的效率低下，第一次临床试验并不成功。因此，有必要开发新的载体系统，既安全又能在肿瘤内提供治疗基因的强表达。为了实现这两个目标，这些载体需要专门针对肿瘤组织。我们最近表明，结合各种病毒的属性，产生了用于有效和靶向全身基因治疗的混合病毒载体。我们将使用这种策略来产生一种新的杂交载体，用于靶向递送治疗基因到胶质母细胞瘤。这些方法可能导致目标载体系统的衍生，这将代表人类胶质母细胞瘤管理和治疗的重大进展。

We aim to develop a novel strategy for the treatment of human glioblastomas. These brain tumours are one of the most lethal malignancies. Despite progress in neurosurgery, radiation and chemotherapy, little progress has been made in the treatment of these tumours. Therefore, new therapeutic strategies are urgently needed.Gene therapy is an attractive approach for cancer treatment. Glioblastomas were one of the earliest targets of cancer gene therapy, but the first clinical trials were not successful because of the inefficient delivery of therapeutic genes into the tumours. Thus, there is a need to develop new vector systems that are safe and able to provide strong expression of the therapeutic genes within the tumours. To achieve these two goals, these vectors need to be specifically targeted to the tumour tissue.We have recently showed that combination of attributes of various viruses resulted in the generation of hybrid viral vectors for efficient and targeted systemic gene therapy. We will use this strategy to generate a novel hybrid vector for targeted delivery of therapeutic genes to glioblastoma.These approaches could result in the derivation of a targeted vector system which would represent a major advance in the management and therapy of human glioblastoma.