2 - Cancer Targeting Gene–Viro–Therapy and its Promising Future: A Trend in Both Cancer Gene Therapy and Cancer Virotherapy

Abstract

The “Cancer Targeting Gene–Viro–Therapy, CTGVT,” strategy was initiated by us in 1999-2001, which was constructed by inserting an antitumor gene into an oncolytic viral vector (OV), it is actually an OV-gene therapy. The CTGVT (OV-gene) shows much higher antitumor effect in vitro and/or in vivo than that of either respective gene therapy alone or respective oncolytic virus therapy alone. We have been persisted to study this strategy for more than 10 years and about 70 with rather high IF value papers have been published. The antitumor order of drugs is OV-gene>OV≥Ad-gene. The CTGVT (OV-gene) has been recently become a hot topic in the cancer field which can be validated by the facts that (1) Amgen paid 1 billion USD to BioVex Inc. to purchase a CTGVT (OV-gene) product, OncoHSV-GM-CSF 205 (OV from herpes simplex virus); (2) OncoPox-GM-CSF (poxvirus) 206 has been published in Nature 2011, because that OncoPox-GM-CSF could be intravenous administration and targeted to the metastasize tumor. We have constructed many modified CTGVT (OV-gene) drugs with complete eradication the xenografted tumor as shown in the text. It will be sure that we can make drugs with higher antitumor effect than that of the 1 billion US OncoHSV-GM-CSF or the Nature paper’s OncoPox-GM-CSF.