Review Article A Potential Therapeutic Strategy for Malignant Mesothelioma

Copyright © 2013 Yuji Tada et al.is is an open access article distributed under theCreativeCommonsAttribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Malignant mesothelioma, closely linked with occupational asbestos exposure, is relatively rare in the frequency, but the patient numbers are going to increase in the next few decades all over the world.e current treatment modalities are not effective in terms of the overall survival and the quality of life. Mesothelioma mainly develops in the thoracic cavity and infrequently metastasizes to extrapleural organs. A local treatment can thereby be bene�cial to the patients, and gene therapywith an intrapleural administration of vectors is one of the potential therapeutics. Preclinical studies demonstrated the efficacy of gene medicine for mesothelioma, and clinical trials with adenovirus vectors showed the safety of an intrapleural injection and a possible involvement of antitumor immune responses. Nevertheless, low transduction efficiency remains the main hurdle that hinders further clinical applications. Moreover, rapid generation of antivector antibody also inhibits transgene expressions. In this paper, we review the current statu