Vector insecurity for gene therapy

2002/04/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Osasuna

Treatment of patients through gene therapy requires safe carriers or vectors that include beneficial genes. Until now, less dangerous vectors were thought to be certain adenovirus. In fact, adenovirus infections are common in humans and do not produce diseases.

However, a paper published in the journal Nature Genetics questions the certainty of these vectors. The geneticists at the University of Washington investigated the influence of adenobirus on cancer cells commonly used in research. In the chromosomes of the cells, both the missing genes and those introduced by the virus were detected.

In this way, it was observed that when joining two chromosomes had been damaged. They still do not know if this disturbance is a cancer risk, but research seems that these adenoviruses are no safer than other vectors.