The equine herpes virus 4 thymidine kinase is a better suicide gene than the human herpes virus 1 thymidine kinase

Restriction Enzyme Analysis of Thymidine Kinase Gene in Four Iranian Isolates of Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1

Suicide Gene Therapy by Herpes Simplex Virus-1 Thymidine Kinase (HSV-TK)

Suicide gene therapy for cancer treatment proposed by Moolten [1] started more than 25 years ago and has gained momentum with little variations in the original technology. At the current statistics, worldwide 1550 clinical trials of gene therapy have been reported (http://www.wiley.co.uk/genmed/clinical) among them 7% using suicide gene therapy. HSV-TK is the most well characterized suicide gen...

PCR detection of thymidine kinase gen of latent herpes simplex Virus type 1 in mice trigeminal ganglia

  Herpes simplex virus type 1 establishes a latent infection in the peripheral nervous system following primary infection. During latent infection, virus genome exhibit limited transcription, with the HSV LATs consistently detected in latency infected ganaglia. Following ocular infection viral latency develops in the trigeminal ganglia. In this study PCR has been used for detection of HSV-1 nuc...

Hepatic infection by thymidine kinase-positive and thymidine kinase-negative herpes simplex virus after partial hepatectomy.

Herpes simplex virus (HSV) infection of mouse liver after partial hepatectomy was studied. Partial hepatectomy resulted in the rapid onset of cellular DNA synthesis and the appearance of many mitotic figures (peak, 3 days after surgery). Similar changes were not seen in control animals. After partial hepatectomy, the mice were infected with thymidine kinase-positive (TK+) and -negative (TK-) HS...

Optimizing prostate cancer suicide gene therapy using herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase active site variants.

The herpes simplex virus (HSV) thymidine kinase gene (tk) forms the basis of a widely used strategy for suicide gene therapy. A library of HSV thymidine kinase enzyme (TK) active site mutants having different affinities for guanosine analog prodrugs was developed. We sought to determine the optimal combination of tk variant and prodrug specifically for prostate cancer gene therapy, using in vit...