Rice University bioengineer receives NIH grant to study the use of AAV-based therapy in the fight against ovarian cancer

Rice University bioengineer receives NIH grant to study the use of AAV-based therapy in the fight against ovarian cancer -

Rice University bioengineer Junghae Suh was awarded a prestigious grant R01 by the National Institutes of health to research the use of viral gene therapy to fight against ovarian cancer.

grant for $ 1.8 million, administered by the National Cancer Institute, will fund five years of research in collaboration with Dr. Anil Sood, a surgeon, researcher and ovarian-cancer specialist at the University of Texas MD Anderson cancer Center.

About 20,000 women in the US are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year and nearly 14,500 die from the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The grant will help Suh and his laboratory adapted adeno-associated virus-otherwise harmless to recognize the extracellular enzymes that are overexpressed in tumors from ovarian-cancer and deliver therapeutic genes to diseased cells .

"proteases are expressed in normal tissue remodeling, but if you cut open and watch the tumor tissue, you will find them in very high levels," said Suh. "Proteases are enzymes that chew proteins. In cancer, they help tumors grow, migrate and metastasize to other sites in the body.

" We're going after them as a target biomarker to enable our virus, "she said." our viruses are designed to be locked in the inactive state. They should be open by the proteases present at tumor sites. Once the viruses are unlocked, they become very sticky. They stick to tumor cells and is internalized, allowing them to deliver toxic payloads to kill cells. "

She said that the virus may be made to recognize overexpressed levels of proteases while ignoring normal expression to protect healthy cells. The researchers plan AAV will be able to target both tumor primary and metastatic sites.

Suh hope that if and when AAV prove their ability to treat cancers of the ovary, will be used to target other cancers. "We can control that proteases and what concentrations they activate the virus, so we can easily modify the virus for the treatment of other diseases. "

Suh has worked on the project since she met Sood in 09." He had clinical expertise, and I had the background virus engineering, so we decided to try it, "she said." has that time, we had very low expectations and was a high-risk idea. Since then, we have had a number of small grants to feed project, including the financing of cancer prevention and research Institute of Texas. It took us many years to get enough clinical data, but now we finally have proof that our concept works. "

in the meantime, she said, gene therapy as a field has advanced significantly, as evidenced by the approval of a treatment based on AAV to treat an orphan disease by the Commission European, the equivalent of the Food and Drug administration of the United States of Europe.