A new way to kill cancer: SLU research shows viruses can destroy lung, co...( ate that both efficiently killed cancer...)

• INGN 009, which has been designed to kill cells that carry a mutation common in many colon cancers, efficiently killed cultured colon cancer cells, but not lung cancer cells.
• INGN 007 effectively killed both types of cancer cells. In an animal model of colon cancer, injection of either INGN 007 or INGN 009 into tumors suppressed tumor growth more efficiently than a negative control (five-fold and ten-fold suppression, respectively).
• INGN 007 also completely suppressed tumor growth in a lung cancer model of disease.

Louis Zumstein, Ph.D., director of research at Introgen Therapeutics Inc., which has licensed rights to these oncolytic viruses and other related technologies, said: "These preclinical data are very promising, and support our belief that oncolytic adenoviruses have enormous potential as a new class of cancer therapies that may provide potent and selective killing of cancer cells. These data also illustrate the flexibility of engineered oncolytic adenoviruses to target selected tumor types with great specificity."

A U.S. patent (No. 6,627,190) for this technology was awarded last year to Dr. Wold and his team of researchers. Introgen and VirRx, a biotechnology company founded by Wold and with a primary interest in cancer gene therapy, are collaborating on new therapies for cancer and other diseases. Introgen is a leading developer of biopharmaceutical products that use non-integrating genes to produce a therapeutic protein to treat cancer and other diseases. Introgen maintains integrated research, development, manufacturing, clinical and regulatory departments and operates a commercial- scale, CGMP manufacturing facility.

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Contact: Joe Muehlenkamp
muehlenk@slu.edu
314-977-8015
Saint Louis University
15-May-2004