THE FIRST clinical trials to use gene therapy in cancer patients could be carried out in two years following positive results from pre-clinical studies at Cork Centre for Cancer Research (CCCR).
Researchers at the centre have been working for the past five years on the stimulation of the body's own immune system to attack and destroy tumour cells.
CCCR general manager Dr Declan Soden said the results from their pre-clinical studies were very exciting and he thought the start of a clinical study on cancer patients was not that far away.
"We have ethics permission from the Irish Medicines Board for a simple gene delivery system into tumours in patients with cancer in Ireland to show that the therapy is safe and works. We are not talking about using viruses to deliver DNA into cells because there are big safety issues involved there," he said.
While the concept of stimulating immune research against tumour cells has been the focus of scientists in various centres around the world for a number of years, Dr Soden said the researchers in Cork now had a better understanding of the immune response in cancer patients.
"We have two particular genes which we are able to put into cancer cells in mice which cure two-thirds of the mice. We have discovered that if we treat the cancer in mice with gene therapy and surgically remove the cancer, and then reinject the cancer back into the mice after they are clear of cancer for 100 days, the tumour does not redevelop," he explains.
Dr Soden said the researchers were trying to develop a vaccination approach against cancer by using the immune system to target antigens on cancer cells so it could destroy those cells.
However, he said they were not treating any patients with gene therapy so far.
The gene therapy research is being funded through a combination of local fundraising and funding from the Irish Cancer Society, Science Foundation Ireland and the Health Research Board.
