E1A-Mediated Gene Therapy

Ovarian carcinoma is the most lethal tumor of the female genital tract and continues to be a major cause of female cancer deaths, largely as a function of early abdominal seeding producing carcinomatosis. The high rate of mortality is mainly caused by the difficulties of early detection of this disease and the lack of effective treatment for advanced stages of ovarian cancers when they are detected. One of the common pathological features of many primary ovarian cancers is the amplification/overexpression of a transmembrane tyrosine kinase receptor, HER-2 (also known as neu or ErbB2) gene (1). Although there are some discrepancies in the literature (2), HER-2 overexpression in cancer cells correlates well with a greater resistance to chemotherapeutic agents in certain experimental systems (3). In addition, HER-2 overexpression has been shown to enhance metastatic potential in many different model systems (4). Therefore, the HER-2 gene has become an excellent target for developing therapeutic agents that could reverse malignant transformation of HER-2-overexpressing cancer cells (5).