TERMIUM Plus®

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MOLECULAR SURGERY [1 record]

Record 1 2000-04-25

English

Subject field(s)
  • Surgery
CONT

An ingenious experiment offers hope for a new kind of surgery for cancer. Kenneth Culver (National Cancer Institute - USA spliced a snippet of DNA from a herpes virus into one of these retroviruses and injected the combination into rats suffering from brain cancer. Since cancer cells are about the only cells that are dividing in a cancer-infected brain, the viruses were supposed to invade those cells and multiply. After five days, the rats were treated with an antiherpes drug. The hope was that the toxin would kill herpes-infected cancer cells and leave the rest of the brain alone. In 11 of the 14 rats, the tumors disappeared completely. The results were so promising that an NIH watchdog committee has already approved a similar test on humans. The risks are high. The researchers will, in effect, be putting mouse genes directly into human brains. But the payoff could be great. Cancer Institute researchers are now searching for other inoperable cancers that might succumb to what they are calling molecular surgery.

French

Domaine(s)
  • Chirurgie
CONT

Grâce à une opération de chirurgie génique réalisée chez la souris, les chercheurs de l'équipe INSERM ont inactivé le gène SMN dans les seules cellules-cibles de l'amyotrophie spinale.

Spanish

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