Radiosensitising agents for the radiotherapy of cancer: advances in traditional and hypoxia targeted radiosensitisers.
BACKGROUND
Radiotherapy is utilised for the treatment of approximately 50% of patients with solid tumours, but its efficacy is limited by normal tissue toxicity and by the intrinsic or acquired radioresistance of many tumours. The combination of radiotherapy with chemotherapeutic agents that preferentially sensitise tumour cells to its cytotoxic effects has thus long been considered as a strategy to enhance cancer therapy. However, current chemoradiotherapy protocols remain highly unsatisfactory. Therefore, continuing efforts are being conducted to identify improved radiosensitising agents.


OBJECTIVE
To survey the patent literature and associated peer-reviewed publications of the past 4 years pertaining to the development of novel radiosensitising agents, with a focus on anticancer drugs traditionally used as radiosensitisers and on agents targeting radioresistant hypoxic tumour cells.


METHODS
Patents were searched with a set of relevant keywords using several search engines ( ep.espacenet.com/ , www.freepatentsonline.com/ , patft.uspto.gov/ ). A Medline search on the same topics was performed in parallel.


CONCLUSIONS
A total of 37 patents/applications were retrieved. Of these, 14 concern the use of conventional anticancer cytotoxic drugs for tumour radiosensitisation. The other patents mostly disclose novel hypoxic radiosensitisers, bioreductive drugs and inhibitors of hypoxia-inducible factor-1. Whether these advances will translate into clinically valuable radiosensitisers is, however, unclear.
Université de Strasbourg, Centre Régional de Lutte contre le Cancer Paul Strauss, Strasbourg, France. pbischoff@strasbourg.fnclcc.fr
Pierre
P
Bischoff
Anais
A
Altmeyer
Francis
F
Dumont
D000818:Animals; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D015687:Cell Hypoxia / Q000187:drug effects / Q000528:radiation effects; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000532:radiotherapy; D010330:Patents as Topic; D011838:Radiation-Sensitizing Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*
D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D011838:Radiation-Sensitizing Agents