Defining a future role for radiogenic therapy

The goal of cancer therapy is to eliminate the cancer and/or to arrest furt her growth while decreasing normal tissue toxicity, i.e. to increase the th erapeutic ratio. This review focuses on a group of therapeutics that are ei ther ( I) directly stimulated by radiation to produce either directly or in directly cytotoxic agents (i.e. genes under the control of a radiation indu cible promoter that produce a cytotoxic protein or an enzyme that converts a prodrug to an active form, respectively); (2) auger-electron emitting rad iolabelled oligonucleotides, antibodies, nucleotide analogues, or other sma ll molecules that are internalized; (3) radiation inducible genes that prod uce a ligand or transporter(or the like) which then can be targeted by cyto toxic agents (e.g. radiolabelled substance). We have termed this group of t herapeutics radiogenic therapy. (C) 2001 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.