A promising therapeutic strategy for metastatic gestational trophoblastic disease: Engineered anticancer gene-expressing stem cells to selectively target choriocarcinoma.

A promising therapeutic strategy for metastatic gestational trophoblastic disease: Engineered anticancer gene-expressing stem cells to selectively target choriocarcinoma. Oncol Lett. 2019 Mar;17(3):2576-2582 Authors: Kim GS, Hwang KA, Choi KC Abstract Gestational trophoblastic disease (GTD) is an unusual disease occurring in pregnancy that originates from abnormal trophoblastic cells and comprises a group of diseases with different properties of invasion, metastasis and recurrence. The GTD group includes hydatidiform moles and gestational trophoblastic neoplasms (GTNs), with GTNs being divided into invasive moles, choriocarcinoma, placental site trophoblastic tumors and epithelioid trophoblastic tumors. The present review focuses on current effective treatments for GTD, including conventional and novel promising direct enzyme prodrug therapies (DEPTs). Conventional therapies, such as chemotherapy and hysterectomy, are currently used in a clinical setting; however, the use of diverse DEPTs, including antibody-DEPT and gene-DEPT is also being attempted to cure GTNs. In addition, gene delivery tools using genetically engineered neural stem cells (NSCs) are presently being examined for the treatment of GTNs. The tumor-tropism of NSCs by chemoattractant factors is a unique characteristic of these cells and can serve as a vehicle to deliver anticancer agents. Previous studies have demonstrated that injection with NSC-expressing suicide gen...
Source: Oncology Letters - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: Oncol Lett Source Type: research