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Judith E. Karp, MD; Samuel Broder, MD

JAMA. 1991;265(23):3141-3143.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

The progress in molecular technology that occurred in the 1980s is being translated in the 1990s to the bedside. Physicians will begin applying principles of molecular biology to the care of patients with cancer to an ever-increasing extent as the decade progresses. This promises to be one of the most exciting eras in which one practices medicine.

Perhaps A. erhaps the most dramatic example is the evolution of gene therapy in human disease. In brief, active genes capable of expressing their encoded proteins are introduced into cells, eg, by using an inert retrovirus to insert the gene into the host cell's DNA. The gene-directed biochemical alterations can then instruct the cell to undertake a function that it otherwise could not optimally perform.

A recent study¹ of tumor suppressor gene transfection in cultured human colon cancer cells provides a glimpse of how gene therapy could theoretically alter the malignant phenotype . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Md

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