OUR TECHNOLOGIES
> Therapeutics   > eIF5A > Cancer > Inflammation > Agriculture   Cancer Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the body. A healthy cell becomes malignant by accumulating multiple mutations in its genome that allow the cell to grow uncontrollably and to evade the body’s natural surveillance system. As the cancer cells grow, they recruit nearby tissue to provide a blood supply for nutrition and inflammatory cells whose cytokine production can further stimulate tumor growth and development. Senesco’s platform technology is focused on modulating the cell growth and cell death signals, which are a normal part of healthy cell function but which cancer cells are able to exploit to support their aberrant growth and immortality. Programmed cell death, or apoptosis, is a natural process whose role is to eliminate unwanted cells including redundant or defective cells. Cancer cells have mutations in tumor suppressor genes that allow them to evade apoptosis. Senesco’s technology strives to reprogram malignant cells to force them to enter programmed cell death. There are two major apoptosis pathways triggered by the immune system: the DNA damage pathway and the death receptor pathway. We have demonstrated that modulation of eIF5A can induce apoptosis through both of these pathways in multiple human cancer cell lines. Consequently we believe that our approach to cancer treatment should be applicable to most, if not all, types of cancer. Our findings indicate that eIF5A expression activates the DNA damage pathway by up-regulating the expression of p53, which promotes apoptosis. Human multiple myeloma cell lines (KAS-6/1 and RPMI 8226) were used to establish subcutaneous tumors in severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) mice. When eIF5A siRNA or eIF5AK50R were administered separately reductions of multiple myeloma tumor growth of 80% and 70%, respectively, were observed compared to controls. When both components were delivered in combination, significantly greater tumor growth inhibition of 94% was measured. The application of eIF5A in the treatment of solid and disseminated tumors has been investigated in mouse models of melanoma and lung cancer. Intravenous administration of eIF5A plasmid significantly inhibited growth of disseminated melanoma tumors in the lung, resulting in a 59% decrease in lung weight (a measure of tumor burden) compared to control animals. [Jin S, Taylor CA, Liu Z, Sun Z, Ye B, Thompson JE. Suppression of Primary and Disseminated Murine Tumor Growth with eIF5A1 Gene Therapy. Gene Ther Mol Biol Vol 12, 207-218, 2008]. If you have more technical questions or interests, please contact us directly at info@senesco.com. Back to Top

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