BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Hypoxic homing in prostate cancer

March 24, 2011 7:00 AM UTC

A U.K. team has engineered an oncolytic virus with multiple regulatory elements that target it specifically to hypoxic prostate cancer cells.1 Delivery of these viruses was effective in mice with human prostate tumors, although it remains unclear whether relying on hypoxic regulation as the only homing determinant will be sufficient in metastatic tumors, which are much smaller than solid tumors and not overtly hypoxic.

The group's delivery vehicles of choice for the oncolytic virus were macrophages, which naturally home to hypoxic areas and respond to low oxygen levels by upregulating hypoxia-inducible transcription factors...