Alternative concepts of suicide gene therapy for graft-versus-host disease after adoptive immunotherapy

Christof M Kramm1

  • 1Department of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology, and Immunology, University Hospital Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany. kramm@uni-duesseldorf.de

Acta Haematologica
|October 30, 2003
PubMed

T-cell suicide gene therapy represents a promising novel treatment strategy for graft-versus-host disease following adoptive immunotherapy after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The clinical efficiency of this approach is still hampered by several obstacles including induction of alloresponses due to the use of immunogenic suicide and selection genes, genetic inactivation of suicide genes, and functional immunological impairment after retroviral transduction with extensive in vitro stimulation. New concepts as possible solutions to these limitations are discussed.

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