Gene transfer and thoracic surgery: more to come

Our plain-English summary of Gene transfer and thoracic surgery: more to come, by L.R. Kaiser, S.M. Albelda (The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, 1997).

The study

• Authors: L.R. Kaiser, S.M. Albelda
• Journal: The Annals of Thoracic Surgery
• Published: 1997;63(6):1527-8
• Type of article: Comment, Editorial
• Cited by: 5 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Summary of the article

This editorial commented on two experimental studies in the same issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery that applied gene transfer to problems in lung transplantation. Takeda and associates used HVJ-liposome-mediated transfer of an endothelin-1 gene to create an animal model of obliterative bronchiolitis. Boasquevisque and colleagues used an adenoviral vector to transfer a marker gene to lung isografts during cold preservation. The authors noted that both studies reported very low gene transfer efficiency, and they stated that gene delivery and efficiency remained the biggest obstacles to clinical use. They described the endothelin-1 model as a reproducible advance for studying obliterative bronchiolitis, but cautioned that it did not directly implicate endothelin-1 in human disease. For the transplant model, they discussed the possible effects of low temperature and of multiplicity of infection; gene expression had been poorer at 4°C than at 10°C. They suggested measuring messenger RNA, and they cited a pig study that found low (under 1%) expression and spread of vector to other organs. Drawing on their own work, they described moving adenovirus-mediated gene transfer for malignant mesothelioma from an animal model to a clinical trial, which took 3.5 years. In 15 patients, adenovirus given into the pleural space was feasible and safe and showed evidence of gene transfer. They concluded that progress from laboratory to patient was necessarily slow.

PubMed has no abstract for this study, and the article doesn't print one. We wrote this summary from the full article with the help of AI. It is not the authors' wording.

In plain English

This was an editorial, not a research study. The authors commented on two animal studies of gene transfer published in the same issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Takeda and associates used gene transfer of endothelin-1 to create an experimental model of obliterative bronchiolitis. Boasquevisque and colleagues used an adenovirus to transfer a gene into lung isografts during cold preservation for transplantation. The authors noted that both studies reported very low efficiency of gene transfer, and that gene expression in the Boasquevisque study was poorer at 4°C than at 10°C. The authors then described their own work taking a gene therapy for malignant mesothelioma from an animal model to a clinical trial, which took 3.5 years. Citing unpublished results, they reported that a study of 15 patients showed the feasibility and safety of giving the adenovirus into the pleural space, and they wrote that much work remained before the approach was likely to be therapeutically useful. The editorial did not study asbestos exposure. The authors concluded that progress from the laboratory to the patient is necessarily slow.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: editorial commentary on two articles in the same journal issue
• Who was studied: No new population was studied. The editorial discussed two animal gene-transfer studies published in the same issue (pages 1556 and 1562), and briefly described the authors' own mesothelioma gene therapy work.
• Main results:
  • The authors described the Takeda study as developing an experimental model of obliterative bronchiolitis using gene transfer of endothelin-1.
  • The authors noted that the Boasquevisque study concerned adenoviral-mediated gene transfer to lung isografts during cold preservation.
  • The authors noted that in the Boasquevisque study, gene expression was poorer at 4°C than at 10°C.
  • The authors wrote that both studies noted very low efficiency of gene transfer in their experimental models.
  • The authors reported that their own mesothelioma gene therapy took 3.5 years from laboratory to clinical trial.
  • Citing unpublished results, the authors reported that a study of 15 patients with malignant mesothelioma showed the feasibility and safety of giving the adenovirus into the pleural space.
  • The authors wrote that much work remained before the mesothelioma approach was likely to be therapeutically useful.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that progress from the laboratory to the patient is necessarily slow.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Thoracic Surgery, Lung Transplant, Malignant Mesothelioma, Clinical Trial.

Related studies

• Regression of AK7 malignant mesothelioma established in immunocompetent mice following intratumoral gene transfer of interferon gamma — L. Cordier Kellerman, L. Valeyrie, et al. (2003)
• Stem Cells Application in Thoracic Surgery: Current Perspective and Future Directions — F. Petrella, L. Spaggiari (2018)
• Small pulmonary lesions--a challenge for thoracic surgery? — K. Kayser, D. Donnwald, et al. (2001)
• The Thoracic Surgery Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center — V.W. Rusch (2015)
• Rapid target gene validation in complex cancer mouse models using re-derived embryonic stem cells — I.J. Huijbers, R. Bin Ali, et al. (2014)
• Differential sensitivity of thoracic malignant tumors to adenovirus-mediated drug sensitization gene therapy — W.R. Smythe, H.C. Hwang, et al. (1995)

Browse more research in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, or return to medical research.