Ligand-directed Cancer Gene Therapy to Angiogenic Vasculature

Gene therapy strategies in cancer have remained an active area of preclinical and clinical research. One of the current limitations to successful trials is the relative transduction efficiency to produce a therapeutic effect. While intratumoral injections are the mainstay of many treatment regimens to date, this approach is hindered by hydrostatic pressures within the tumor and is not always applicable to all tumor subtypes. Vascular-targeting strategies introduce an alternative method to deliver vectors with higher local concentrations and minimization of systemic toxicity. Moreover, therapeutic targeting of angiogenic vasculature often leads to enhanced bystander effects, improving efficacy. While identification of functional and systemically accessible molecular targets is challenging, approaches, such as in vivo phage display and phage-based viral delivery vectors, provide a platform upon which vascular targeting of vectors may become a viable and translational approach. (C) 2009, Elsevier Inc.