Defining a future role for radiogenic therapy

Abstract 

The goal of cancer therapy is to eliminate the cancer and/or to arrest further growth while decreasing normal tissue toxicity, i.e. to increase the therapeutic ratio. This review focuses on a group of therapeutics that are either (1) directly stimulated by radiation to produce either directly or indirectly cytotoxic agents (i.e. genes under the control of a radiation inducible promoter that produce a cytotoxic protein or an enzyme that converts a prodrug to an active form, respectively); (2) auger-electron emitting radiolabelled oligonucleotides, antibodies, nucleotide analogues, or other small molecules that are internalized; (3) radiation inducible genes that produce a ligand or transporter (or the like) which then can be targeted by cytotoxic agents (e.g. radiolabelled substance). We have termed this group of therapeutics radiogenic therapy.

Keywords: Cancer, radiation, genes, antibody, somatostatin

No full text is available. To read the body of this article, please view the PDF online.

• f1 Correspondence to: J. M. Kaminski, Department of Radiology, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA 30912, Tel.: (215) 728-2825; Fax (215) 214–1629; E-mail: JM_Kaminski@FCCC.edu