THE early promise of 鈥渁ntisense鈥� cancer therapy could finally be realised in
better treatments for the disease, say Austrian researchers.
A team from the University of Vienna has combined antisense
molecules鈥攕mall sequences of DNA or RNA that bind to specific genes and
prevent their expression鈥攚ith standard drug treatment for melanoma.
The team say that treatment with the anticancer drug dacarbazine hastened the
death of cancer cells in rats, but the rate of tumour cell death increased
fourfold when the rats were first given an antisense molecule against a gene
that promotes melanoma (Nature Medicine, vol 4, p 232).
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The team hopes that by blocking the human cancer-promoting gene
bcl-2, which has been linked to 90 per cent of melanomas, it may be
possible to make standard drug treatments more effective.