Study of interactions between between tumour cells and mesenchymal stem cells carrying suicide genes

Project leader: Miroslava Matúšková
Project duration: 2010 - 2012

In the proposed project, we would like to continue with our research in the field of mesenchymal stem cells mediated cancer gene therapy. Experimental data including our results confirm that mesenchymal stem cells carrying therapeutic genes are able to home and engraft into the site of tumour burden, and they induce strong cytotoxic effect in situ. The aim of this project is to compare two therapeutic systems of MSC-mediated gene-directed enzyme/prodrug therapy using cytosine deaminase/5-fluorocytosine and thymidine kinase/ganciclovir. We will compare the efficiency of these two systems on various tumour cell lines. We plan to study interactions between MSC and chemoresistant cell subpopulations, which can serve as a model for tumour-initiating cells. We would like to further evaluate utility of MSC in targeted cancer gene therapy.

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