ABSTRACT
Acknowledgments ............................................................................................ 465
References ........................................................................................................ 465
Cancer gene therapy has attracted the interest of many researchers and clinicians
because of its unique features. In conventional therapies, specificity is primarily
based on a specific molecular drug-target interaction. In cancer gene therapies,
specificity may also be enhanced at multiple further layers: delivery of viral vectors or
synthetic nanoparticles could be specifically targeted to the tumor (“pharmacological
targeting”); intracellular uptake and delivery of the nucleic acid into the proper
compartment (the nucleus in the case of genes, the cytoplasm in the case of RNA,
e.g., siRNA) might be specifically controlled (“transductional targeting”); the
expression of gene constructs can be regulated by tumor-specific transcription
(“transcriptional targeting”).
