Adenovirus Mediated Non-Opiated Strategy for Cancer Pain Management

摘要

Increased awareness and systematic screening for breast cancer has resulted in early detection of this disease. However, 20 - 30% of node negative breast carcinoma patients will develop recurrent tumors and given the highly metastatic nature of breast cancer, many of these patients progress to disseminated disease. Although developments in experimental therapies for the treatment of advanced breast cancer is promising, much of the existing treatment for advanced metastatic cancer is palliative. Among the numerous symptoms of advanced cancer, pain remains the most significant determinant of quality of life. Despite pain being the most feared symptom of advanced cancer, clinical management of cancer pain remains inadequate. Limitation in the clinical management of advanced cancer pain appears multifactorial ranging from the nature of pain itself to the irrational fear of prescribing large quantities of opiates among the treating physicians . The goal of this investigation is to develop a novel non-opioid approach to pain management. Our present focus is on antisense-oligonucleotide-mediated knock down of an intracellular signal transduction molecule protein kinase C-y known to play a critical role in the development of pathological pain. if successful, a new therapeutic modality will have wide spread applications in the management of terminal cancer pain and other intractable pain syndromes.