Question: would it be possible to use retroviruses to target cancer cells selectively to insert a gene that expresses a target protein, and then do monoclonal antibody treatment on that? Would the cancer accelerated metabolism make this any good?
Not an expert here, but it seems to me that if you can make a virus that preferentially infects cancer cells you might as well make the virus kill the infected cancer cells directly.
Fair, depends how hard it is to do that though, I assumed inserting a target gene would be easier than triggering death in a cell that has probably hopelessly broken its apoptosis mechanism.
What’s the difference between a virus that preferentially infects cancer cells and a virus that kills infected cancer cells directly?
Does “preferentially” mean that the virus also attacks non-cancer cells? Or does it mean that it just doesn’t hit cancer cells as hard?
“A virus that kills infected cancer cells”: does this mean the virus kills cells infected with the virus mentioned in the first part of the question or is this just badly phrased?
Question: would it be possible to use retroviruses to target cancer cells selectively to insert a gene that expresses a target protein, and then do monoclonal antibody treatment on that? Would the cancer accelerated metabolism make this any good?
Not an expert here, but it seems to me that if you can make a virus that preferentially infects cancer cells you might as well make the virus kill the infected cancer cells directly.
Fair, depends how hard it is to do that though, I assumed inserting a target gene would be easier than triggering death in a cell that has probably hopelessly broken its apoptosis mechanism.
What’s the difference between a virus that preferentially infects cancer cells and a virus that kills infected cancer cells directly?
Does “preferentially” mean that the virus also attacks non-cancer cells? Or does it mean that it just doesn’t hit cancer cells as hard?
“A virus that kills infected cancer cells”: does this mean the virus kills cells infected with the virus mentioned in the first part of the question or is this just badly phrased?