Cancer Gene Therapy at the Crossroads

Scientists have established that gene therapy can cause cancer.1 But after more than a decade of clinical experience, formal evidence is mounting that gene therapy can cure cancer as well. The allure has attracted sufficient attention to launch a journal, Cancer Gene Therapy, in 1994. And burgeoning literature documents progress in the field.2 A landmark event late in 2003 was approval of the first such therapy. China's Shenzhen SiBono GenTech now markets an adenoviral vector that expresses wild

Written byCarl June

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Scientists have established that gene therapy can cause cancer.¹ But after more than a decade of clinical experience, formal evidence is mounting that gene therapy can cure cancer as well. The allure has attracted sufficient attention to launch a journal, Cancer Gene Therapy, in 1994. And burgeoning literature documents progress in the field.² A landmark event late in 2003 was approval of the first such therapy. China's Shenzhen SiBono GenTech now markets an adenoviral vector that expresses wild type p53 to treat head and neck squamous cell cancer.

No approved therapies have appeared in Europe or the United States, but despite significant setbacks and continuing challenges I believe that successful cancer gene therapies are on the horizon, and for reasons not widely appreciated they will prove to be financial blockbusters.

Notably, from my perspective, gene therapy may soon be used to augment the antitumor immune response. Scientists have been injecting ...

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