Artikel
Application of gene therapy in neurosurgery: BMP gene therapy
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Autoren
Veröffentlicht: | 23. April 2004 |
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Gliederung
Text
Objective
Gene therapy techniques have the potential to treat numerous diseases, from cancer to diabetes. One promising application is the use of bone morphogenetic (BMP) gene therapy to induce bone formation. Our previous studies demonstrated that both direct and ex vivo BMP gene therapy have the capacity to initiate the normal endochondral pathway, leading to rapid mature bone formation. In our present study, clinical studies: computed tomography (CT) and radionuclide scintigraphic imaging was used to assess the morphologic and functional dynamics of bone formation induced by BMP gene therapy accurately and noninvasively.
Material and methods
Athymic nude rodents were treated with 1.25 x 1010 particles of adenovirus-BMP-2 (Ad-BMP-2) (treatment group) and adenovirus-β-Gal (control group). At various intervals after treatment, the animals underwent CT, planar digital radiography and planar radionuclide scintigraphic imaging.
Results
Radionuclide scintigraphy clearly demonstrated active bone deposition that begun as early as 15 days after treatment and peaked at approximately 36 days, only at the Ad-BMP-2 injection sites. CT demonstrated ectopic bone induction over time at the Ad-BMP-2 treatment sites, in perfect correlation with the scintigraphic findings.
Conclusions
This study clearly illustrates that gene therapy -induced osteogenesis can be studied with multimodality clinical imaging and supports the use of these approaches in future preclinical and clinical studies.