MICE struck down by leukaemia have become the first animals to die from cancer as a direct result of faulty gene therapy.
Gene therapy pioneers have always worried that the viruses they use to shuttle therapeutic genes into patients might accidentally dump their cargo in the wrong spot on chromosomes. If this happened, the inserted DNA could in very rare cases trigger the expression of cancer-causing “oncogenes”, or disrupt sentinel genes that guard against cancer.
It seems that these fears were justified. While investigating potential problems of gene therapy, such as failure of the transplanted cells to develop properly, a…
