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Biotech / Medical : BJCT-BIOJECT-needle less injection product -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geewiz who wrote (436)	1/15/2000 11:09:00 PM
From: geewiz	Respond to of 534

One more gene delivery article which helps explain why so few gene therapy trials have yeilded results; newscientist.com:80/ns/20000115/newsstory10.html NEWS 15/1/00 Missing the target Gene therapy's most promising weapons may have a limited range << PLANS for using HIV and related viruses to overcome a major hurdle in gene therapy have been dealt a blow. Unlike most of the vectors used in gene therapy, HIV and other "lentiviruses" should be able to deliver genes to cells that aren't dividing. But the latest research shows that they don't always do so. Many gene therapy trials have yielded disappointing results, mainly because so few cells in the target tissue take up the therapeutic gene. At any one time, the vast majority of our cells aren't dividing. So finding a vector that can carry genes into these cells should help overcome this problem--and several experiments with lentiviruses have suggested that they just might do the job. Following early successes, several groups are now planning to use HIV, stripped of the genes that make it so deadly, for gene therapy against AIDS (New Scientist, 6 February 1999, p 5). And other research teams are experimenting with similarly genetically disabled lentiviruses, such as equine infectious anaemia virus,for a wide range of gene therapies. >> So this states the most likely problem to be because so few cells in the target tissue take up the therapeutic gene. It's also interesting that this study is out of Stanford, which, if I remember correctly was studying the Biojector! later, art