Heung Chong

TL;DR: It is reported here that the number of recently established lung metastases of B16 melanoma in C57BL mice treated with ganciclovir is reduced compared to controls after multiple i.v. administrations of high titer retroviral supernatant encoding the HSVtk gene, but not after administration of liposome-complexed plasmid DNA.

TL;DR: Data show that B16/HSVtk+ cells die predominantly by necrosis, rather than apoptosis, on exposure to GC, a process which may be associated with the generation of anti‐tumour inflammatory responses, and discuss the development of improved vectors for gene therapy to augment these effects in vivo.

TL;DR: It is shown that expression of B7–2 led to a local antitumour response as well as significantly raised systemic immunity, and combining costimulatory molecules and cytokines may be a useful therapeutic approach in some, but not all tumours.

TL;DR: To the authors' knowledge, this is the first report of RCR arising from routine use of GP + envAM12 cells or any similar third generation packaging line and has important implications for the use of such lines in human gene therapy protocols.

TL;DR: It is shown that expression of a member of the B7 family of co-stimulatory molecules by CMT93 murine colorectal tumor or 1735 murine melanoma cells resulted in a local antitumor response in immunocompetent mice, suggesting that some caution is appropriate when considering the use of these molecules in the gene therapy of cancer.