Current status of tumor radiogenic therapy

Although tumor gene therapy has a distance to clinical use due to some problems, the combination of irradiation and gene therapy holds much promise in cancer therapy based on the traditional radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery. We have termed this therapeutic radiogenic therapy. This review focuses on the group of radiogenic therapy that are either: (1) improvement of gene transfer efficiency by irradiation; (2) radiotherapy combined with cytokines gene delivery or enhancement of the immunity of tumor cells by transgene; (3) directly stimulated by radiation to produce either directly or indirectly cytotoxic agents; (4) increasing of radiosensitivity in gene therapy; (5) radioprotective gene therapy-enhances radiation tumor killing effect while protecting the normal tissue and organs with transgene using transfer vector. (authors)