[A new medical treatment for thrombosis by genetic engineering]

There has been established a new medical treatment that is due to the progress of genetic engineering and the development of gene delivery techniques. As well as other fields, cardiologists investigate a protocol for gene therapy, including thrombosis and its related diseases. They make steady progress in the application of clinical trials. Specially, they have focused on gene therapy for the restenosis after percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) or coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), and there are many successful reports. As one of the strategy for an inhibition of thrombosis formation, they try to deliver the genes of cyclooxygenase-1, tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) and endothelial nitric oxide synthetase (eNOS). Also, we target for the introduction of anti-sense oligonucleotide; proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), cell division cycle (cdc)-2 kinase, or p21 (sdi-1) gene in order to inhibit the progression of cell cycle in which vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). Others and we pay attention to the function of vessel protection and find a protocol for the gene delivery of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), which selectively induce the growth of endothelial cell. Since, particularly, VEGF and HGF induce angiogenesis, Others and we try to cure arteriosclerosis obliterans (ASO) with delivering these genes to the affected part. In addition, we develop new techniques such as the delivery of NF kappa B gene toward myocardial infarction and the transplantation of genetically modified myocardium that is treated with gene therapy. We place our hopes on these new technical applications to the clinical trial.