Development of Gene Therapy Research in Taiwan

Wen K. Yang

《Journal of Genetics and Molecular Biology》 16卷1&2期 (2005/06) Pp. 16-25

https://doi.org/10.30047/JGMB.200506.0002

並列摘要

Gene therapy research has attracted worldwide attention from biomedical professionals as well as from general public since early 1990s because of the well-publicized clinical trials in the United States. In Taiwan a government-supported gene therapy program project was initiated in 1994 to address the fundamental aspects of gene transfer technology and therapy-related patho-physiology of important cancer diseases of Taiwan. In 1997, the project was expanded into ”Gene Therapy/DNA Vaccine” as one of six major themes in the newly launched ”Genes in Health Sciences” Frontier Science & Technology Program, which in turn was subsequently incorporated into the National Genomic Medicine Research Program of Taiwan in 2000. Thus, under auspices of different funding mechanisms, biomedical scientists of Taiwan interested in gene therapy research had the opportunity to receive several years of relatively stable support for individual investigator-initiated peer-reviewed research projects and produced some innovative gene-based therapeutic approaches that have the potential of further development toward clinical application. Examples of these include combined suicidal/cytokine gene therapy, tumor antigen-cytokine fusion genes, membrane expression of single chain antibody prodrug enzyme fusion gene, immune enhancing strategies against human papilloma virus oncogenes, abrogation of autoimmune diabetes by decoy receptor 3 approach etc. Frontier Science & Technology Program or National Genomic Medicine Program so far have not directly funded the clinical trial of gene therapy, although Department of Health has published such guidelines in 1997 (revised in 2002) and also approved one protocol of VEGF recombinant plasmid DNA injection for vascular occlusive disorders. Instead, several protocols of cell-based immunotherapy generated from the concepts and approaches resulted from works of cancer gene therapy research have been officially approved for clinical trial to treat human cancer diseases. However, since 2005 the Directorate of the National Genomic Program has set a top-down ”missionoriented” funding policy that no more emphasizes the gene-based therapeutic research. The prospect appears dim for maintaining a competitive edge at the fundamental level or for advancing toward clinical application and biotechnological development of gene-based therapeutics in Taiwan.

並列關鍵字

genomic medicine ； gene therapy ； cell-based therapy ； gene transfer technology ； cancer patho-physiology ； clinical trial