Gene therapy for lung cancer: practice and promise

Abstract

Gene therapy has emerged as an exciting and promising strategy of cancer therapy. Improved molecular biology techniques and a greater understanding of the mechanisms involved in lung cancer pathogenesis allowed a variety of genes to be validated as molecular targets for gene therapy. A variety of gene therapy strategy have been explored in the pre-clinical research. These include replacement of defective tumor suppressor genes, inactivating oncogenes, introducing suicide genes, immunogenic therapy, and antiangiogenesis-based approach. Clinical trials of gene therapy for lung cancer showed the feasibility of delivering a variety of agent as well as highlighted problems with the delivery of therapeutic constructs. Although some may consider the initial results of these novel therapies to be disappointing, they underscore the complexity of these approaches and the likelihood that these approaches will be effective only when used in a coordinated fashion in the proper clinical context. This review provides an update on our current understanding of lung cancer biology and examines several important issues in cancer gene therapy. In addition, recent results of clinical trials of gene therapy for lung cancer are presented.