�Scientific American magazine focused on two University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers in a news story on observational next-generation anticancer therapies.
David T. Curiel, M.D., Ph.D., is a UAB professor of medicine and director of the human gene therapy division, and Ronald Alvarez, M.D., is a UAB professor of medicine and director of the gynecologic oncology division.
Both doctors ar featured in a Scientific American particular cancer edition, and both served as co-authors on the account "Tumor-busting viruses." The editors chose Curiel and Alvarez because of their research into a field call viral factor therapy, or virotherapy.
Virotherapy involves an experimental technique to target viruses to genus Cancer cells spell leaving levelheaded cells unaffected. The viruses are genetically engineered to kill tumor cells in different ways. One means is by adopting the viruses' natural ability to invade and reproduce as a way to deliver target genes that make tumor cells more susceptible to existing chemotherapies.
Curiel and Alvarez have been testing this concept with a virus compound called adenovirus in women with repeated ovarian or other gynecologic cancers. The clinical trial is noneffervescent in the early stages, yet the compound has shown antitumour effects that appear secure to most patients, Curiel said.
"We foresee a strong role for viruses that is, curative viruses in 21st-century medicament," Curiel and Alvarez wrote in wrote in the story.
First proposed in the 1940s, virotherapy now relies heavily on adenoviruses, a cause of the common cold that has been studied and altered extensively for medical research. Adenoviruses have the ability to shuttle targeted segments of DNA into a tumor cell and make biochemical changes that minimize damage to good for you cells.
University of Alabama at Birmingham
701 20th St. S, AB 1320
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