Design of Prodrugs for Suicide Gene Therapy

A major problem for cancer treatment is the presence of toxic side effects associated with chemotherapeutic agents that limit their efficacy. Alternatively, this can be regarded as the limitation of the dose of drug available to a patient before major general toxicity occurs, with consequent decrease in tumor cell killing and reduced chances of cure. A novel approach designed to circumvent this problem and increase the local concentration of cytotoxic drug at the tumor site with fewer and less drastic systemic side effects is gene-directed enzyme prodrug therapy (GDEPT).