Received 2002-01-26 Accepted 2002-12-05 Advancements of antisense oligonucleotides in treatment of breast cancer 1

KEY WORDS breast neoplasms; antisense oligonucleotides; oncogenes Breast cancer is one kind of multi-gene related malignancy. Overexpression of some oncogenes such as HER-2 (c-erbB-2, Neu), bcl-2/bcl-xL, protein kinase A (PKA), and transferrin receptor gene (TfR gene), etc signifi-cantly affect the prognosis of breast cancer. It was shown that specific suppression of the overexpressed genes above resulted in the improvement of the therapy of breast cancer. Antisense interference, one of useful tools for inhibiting the overexpression of specific oncogenes, was involved in the therapy of breast cancer in recent years. Data indicated that antisense oligonucleotides (ON) could inhibit specially the expression of the target genes on mRNA or protein levels in most of cases; some ON candidates showed encouraging therapeutic effects in vitro and in vivo on breast cancer cell lines or xenografts. Furthermore, the combination use of the antisense ON and normal chemotherapeutic agents indicated synergistic antitumor effects, which was probably the best utilization of antisense ON in the treatment of breast cancer