Long-term treatment with valganciclovir improves lentiviral suicide gene therapy of glioblastoma.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Suicide gene therapy for malignant gliomas has shown encouraging results in the latest clinical trials. However, prodrug application was most often restricted to short-term treatment (14 days), especially when replication-defective vectors were used. We previously showed that a substantial fraction of herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase (HSV-TK) transduced tumor cells survive ganciclovir (GCV) treatment in an orthotopic glioblastoma (GBM) xenograft model. Here we analyzed whether these TK+ tumor cells are still sensitive to prodrug treatment and whether prolonged prodrug treatment can enhance treatment efficacy.

Methods

Glioma cells positive for TK and green fluorescent protein (GFP) were sorted from xenograft tumors recurring after suicide gene therapy, and the

SUBMITTER: Hossain JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6620640 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature