Suicide Gene Therapy By Amphiphilic Copolymer Nanocarrier for Spinal Cord Tumor

Spinal cord tumors (SCT) are uncommon neoplasms characterized by irregular growth of tissue inside the spinal cord that can result in non-mechanical back pain. Current treatments for SCT include surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy, but these conventional therapies have many limitations. Suicide gene therapy using plasmid encoding herpes simplex virus-thymidine kinase (pHSV-TK) and ganciclovir (GCV) has been an alternative approach to overcome the limitations of current therapies. However, there is a need to develop a carrier that can deliver both pHSV-TK and GCV for improving therapeutic efficacy. Our group developed a cationic, amphiphilic copolymer, poly (lactide-co-glycolide) -graft-polyethylenimine (PgP), and demonstrated its efficacy as a drug and gene carrier in both cell culture studies and animal models. In this study, we evaluated PgP as a gene carrier and demonstrate that PgP can efficiently deliver reporter genes, pGFP in rat glioma (C6) cells in vitro, and p-gal in a rat T5 SCT model in vivo. We also show that PgP/pHSV-TK with GCV treatment showed significantly higher anticancer activity in C6 cells compared to PgP/pHSV-TK without GCV treatment. Finally, we demonstrate that PgP/pHSV-TK with GCV treatment increases the suicide effect and apoptosis of tumor cells and reduces tumor size in a rat T5 SCT model.