Anglo-Finnish biotechnology company Ark Therapeutics has reported thatits EG009 gene therapy has been shown to double survival times in a Phase I/IIa clinical trial involving patients with malignant glioma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
EG009 therapy involves the post-surgical injection into the brain of a Herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase gene, carried by an adenoviral vector, followed by the systemic administration of the antiviral ganciclovir several days later. Cells transfected with the gene therapy produce the thymidine kinase enzyme, which converts ganciclovir into a toxic metabolite which kills both transfected and neighboring cells. As most of the cells in the healthy brain do not divide, they cannot be transfected by the virus and so are protected from this effect.
The mean survival time for patients treated with adenoviral EG009 was 15 months, compared to 8.3 months in controls and 7.4 months in patients who received the same gene delivered by a retrovirus. A larger Phase IIb trial is now underway in Finland.
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