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This profile was automatically generated using 33 references found on the Internet. This information has not been verified. Learn more...
This profile was automatically generated using 33 references found on the Internet. This information has not been verified. Learn more...
View all 33 references Web References
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1. Oral cancer in the news articles
www.oralcancerfoundation.org/n - [Cached]Published on: 5/17/2005 Last Visited: 6/18/2008
"These results clearly demonstrate the high potential of this modified virus to serve as a novel vector for cancer gene therapy of hepatocellular carcinoma," said Boris Blechacz, M.D., a research fellow in the Molecular Medicine Program at the Mayo Clinic and the study's lead investigator.
Liver cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death worldwide, causing nearly a million deaths per year.Despite a variety of differing treatment approaches, its prognosis remains poor with a median survival of about 10 months following diagnosis.For this reason, scientists are anxious to find novel methods that could improve short- and long-term survival from this disease.
"The attenuated vaccine strain of measles virus is an oncolytic virus which has shown anti-tumor activity and tumor-selectivity in a variety of different tumor models," said Blechacz.
...
"Intravenous
treatment with this combination followed by injection of radioactive iodine into the mice bearing the human hepatocellular cancer cells resulted in high uptake of the radioactive iodine at the tumor site," said Blechacz."This provides the possibility of enhancing the therapeutic effect by co-treatment with therapeutic radioactive iodine."
Future studies should help scientists evaluate the efficacy and optimal delivery system of their radio-virotherapy vector.
"We expect this work will take another two years before this technology will be available for testing in patient studies," said Blechacz. -
2. Healthscout Articles
www.centralbap.com/news/health - [Cached]Published on: 4/19/2005 Last Visited: 4/26/2005
"The preliminary data looks very promising," said study author Dr. Boris Blechacz, a research fellow in the Molecular Medicine Program at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
"Primary liver cancer has a bad prognosis," Blechacz noted."Surgery is the most common treatment, but for curative therapy just 12 percent of patients qualify for surgery.The rest choose chemotherapy, but in the end the problem is that liver cancer gets diagnosed too late most of the time.So, we're looking into this as a therapeutic option in addition to surgery and chemotherapy."
After finding that liver cancer cells contain large quantities of the receptors to which the measles virus is naturally drawn, Blechacz and his team extracted liver tumor tissue samples from patients and injected them with MV-Edm in a laboratory setting.
In addition, the researchers grafted human liver cancer samples onto laboratory mice, then treated the mice with the engineered measles virus.
The authors report that large-scale cancer cell death was evident in both cases, noting that the tumors were fully eradicated in nearly one-third of the mice.The engineered measles virus appears to jump-start a natural process called apoptosis, or programmed cell death, causing a kind of mass suicide of cancer cells.
Blechacz and his colleagues then went one step further.First, they attached an iodine "transport" protein to the engineered measles virus, then introduced this MV-Edm/protein combination into mouse liver tumors.According to the Mayo team, the added iodine protein should act as a magnet for subsequent radioactive iodine injections.
The strategy succeeded.As hoped, tumor cells injected with the measles virus and radioactive iodine displayed a high degree of radioactive iodine absorption.According to Blechacz' group, this could open the door to highly-targeted measles virus treatments used in combination with radioactive iodine.
"We were surprised about the strength with which these therapies worked, how efficiently they worked," said Blechacz.
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SOURCES: Boris Blechacz, Ph.D., research fellow, Molecular Medicine Program, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.; Theodore Friedmann, M.D., director, Program in Human Gene Therapy, University of California-San Diego; April 19, 2005, presentations, American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting, Anaheim, Calif. -
3. Oral cancer in the news articles
www.oralcancerfoundation.org/n - [Cached]Published on: 4/19/2005 Last Visited: 12/19/2007
"These results clearly demonstrate the high potential of this modified virus to serve as a novel vector for cancer gene therapy of hepatocellular carcinoma," said Boris Blechacz, M.D., a research fellow in the Molecular Medicine Program at the Mayo Clinic and the study's lead investigator.
Liver cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death worldwide, causing nearly a million deaths per year.Despite a variety of differing treatment approaches, its prognosis remains poor with a median survival of about 10 months following diagnosis.For this reason, scientists are anxious to find novel methods that could improve short- and long-term survival from this disease.
"The attenuated vaccine strain of measles virus is an oncolytic virus which has shown anti-tumor activity and tumor-selectivity in a variety of different tumor models," said Blechacz.
...
"Intravenous
treatment with this combination followed by injection of radioactive iodine into the mice bearing the human hepatocellular cancer cells resulted in high uptake of the radioactive iodine at the tumor site," said Blechacz."This provides the possibility of enhancing the therapeutic effect by co-treatment with therapeutic radioactive iodine."
Future studies should help scientists evaluate the efficacy and optimal delivery system of their radio-virotherapy vector.
"We expect this work will take another two years before this technology will be available for testing in patient studies," said Blechacz.
