24. März 2008
La Jolla, CA – Dr. Clodagh O’Shea, $, eine Assistenzprofessorin am Labor für Molekular- und Zellbiologie am Salk Institute for Biological Studies, wurde mit dem Young Investigator’s Award in Gen-Therapie für Krebs 2007 ausgezeichnet. Sie erhält $ 500.000 über einen Zeitraum von drei Jahren, um die “Onkolytischen Adenoviren der nächsten Generation für die p53-selektive Tumortherapie” zu entwickeln.”
Established in 1986 by the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy, the Young Investigator’s Award in Gene Therapy for Cancer supports innovative efforts aimed at furthering the development of gene therapy approaches for the treatment of cancer.
Most commonly used chemotherapies are little more than DNA poisons that slow down tumor growth but do not ultimately cure patients. Chemotherapy also has devastating side effects, which is especially tragic in children. There is a desperate need to identify new drugs and therapeutic modalities that conclusively ablate cancer cells but leave normal cells unharmed.
The p53 tumor suppressor pathway is inactivated by mutations in almost every cancer and yet there are no drugs that specifically target p53 defective tumors. O’Shea is working on the development of viruses that act as p53 mutation-guided missiles, which unerringly home in on cancer cells throughout the body and implode them from the inside.
Such oncolytic viruses offer a novel and potentially self-perpetuating cancer therapy: Each time a virus infects a cancer cell and successfully multiplies, the virus ultimately kills the cancer cell by bursting it open to release thousands of viral progenies, which are ready to seek out remaining tumor cells and distant micro-metastases.
Probably no new therapy on the horizon holds more promise than ‘oncolytic viruses’, which have the potential to help save the lives of many cancer patients.
Born and raised in Cork, Ireland, O’Shea earned her bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Microbiology from the University College Cork, Ireland and her doctorate in Immunology from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF)/Imperial College London, England. After completing a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of California in San Francisco, she was recruited to the Salk Institute in La Jolla in 2007.
Founded in 2001, the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy is built on the premise that molecular medicine is the new paradigm to treat disease. Since its inception, the Alliance’s declared goal is to promote gene therapy to combat cancer. To this end, ACGT identifies, funds and monitors innovative research that meets a rigorous set of scientific standards and has the potential, in the foreseeable future, to treat cancers of all types.
Das Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Kalifornien, ist eine unabhängige gemeinnützige Organisation, die sich grundlegenden Entdeckungen in den Biowissenschaften, der Verbesserung der menschlichen Gesundheit und der Ausbildung zukünftiger Forschergenerationen widmet. Jonas Salk, M.D., dessen Polio-Impfstoff die lähmende Kinderlähmung im Jahr 1955 fast ausgerottet hat, eröffnete das Institut 1965 mit einer Landschenkung der Stadt San Diego und der finanziellen Unterstützung der March of Dimes.
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