title: Stem cells' guided gene therapy of cancer: New frontier in personalized and targeted therapy.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Diagnosis and therapy of cancer remain to be the greatest challenges for all physicians working in clinical oncology and molecular medicine. The statistics speak for themselves with the grim reports of 1,638,910 men and women diagnosed with cancer and nearly 577,190 patients passed away due to cancer in the USA in 2012. For practicing clinicians, who treat patients suffering from advanced cancers with contemporary systemic therapies, the main challenge is to attain therapeutic efficacy, while minimizing side effects. Unfortunately, all contemporary systemic therapies cause side effects. In treated patients, these side effects may range from nausea to damaged tissues. In cancer survivors, the iatrogenic outcomes of systemic therapies may include genomic mutations and their consequences. Therefore, there is an urgent need for personalized and targeted therapies. Recently, we reviewed the current status of suicide gene therapy for cancer. Herein, we discuss the novel strategy: genetically engineered stem cells' guided gene therapy.
  Stem cells have the unique potential for self renewal and differentiation. This potential is the primary reason for introducing them into medicine to regenerate injured or degenerated organs, as well as to rejuvenate aging tissues. Recent advances in genetic engineering and stem cell research have created the foundations for genetic engineering of stem cells as the vectors for delivery of therapeutic transgenes. Specifically in oncology, the stem cells are genetically engineered to deliver the cell suicide inducing genes selectively to the cancer cells only. Expression of the transgenes kills the cancer cells, while leaving healthy cells unaffected. Herein, we present various strategies to bioengineer suicide inducing genes and stem cell vectors. Moreover, we review results of the main preclinical studies and clinical trials. However, the main risk for therapeutic use of stem cells is their cancerous transformation. Therefore, we discuss various strategies to safeguard stem cell guided gene therapy against iatrogenic cancerogenesis.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Defining cancer biomarkers to facilitate early diagnosis, elucidating cancer genomics and proteomics with modern tools of next generation sequencing, and analyzing patients' gene expression profiles provide essential data to elucidate molecular dynamics of cancer and to consider them for crafting pharmacogenomics-based personalized therapies. Streamlining of these data into genetic engineering of stem cells facilitates their use as the vectors delivering therapeutic genes into specific cancer cells. In this realm, stem cells guided gene therapy becomes a promising new frontier in personalized and targeted therapy of cancer.
authors.affiliation: "G. Papanikolaou" General Hospital, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece, EU.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mavroudi
authors.affiliation: "G. Papanikolaou" General Hospital, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece, EU.
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zarogoulidis
authors.affiliation: "G. Papanikolaou" General Hospital, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece, EU.
authors.forename: Konstantinos
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Porpodis
authors.affiliation: "G. Papanikolaou" General Hospital, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece, EU.
authors.forename: Ioannis
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kioumis
authors.affiliation: "G. Papanikolaou" General Hospital, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece, EU.
authors.forename: Sofia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lampaki
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Lonny
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yarmus
authors.affiliation: San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA ; Phoenix Biomolecular Engineering Foundation, San Francisco, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Raf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Malecki
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Konstantinos
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Zarogoulidis
authors.affiliation: Phoenix Biomolecular Engineering Foundation, San Francisco, CA, USA ; University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA.
authors.forename: Marek
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Malecki
keywords: Cancer; genomic medicine; personalized therapy; pharmacogenomics; stem cell guided delivery of therapeutics; stem cells; suicide gene therapy; targeted therapy