Clinical Trials of Immunogene Therapy for Spontaneous Tumors in Companion Animals

Table 3

Equine cancer immunogene therapy trials.

#	Genes	Tumor	Vector	Mode	Results	Authors/year/reference
	Cytokines	Equine
1	hIL-12	MEL	Naked plasmid	In vivo − i.t./; NAT	( = 7) PR: 59 % reduction of injected tumors burden	Heinzerling et al., 2001 [56]
2	eIL-12	MEL	Naked plasmid	In vivo − i.t./; NAT	( = 7) feasibility assessed, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics of biological activity.	Müller et al., 2011 [58]
3	hIL-12/; hIL-18	MEL	Naked plasmid	In vivo − i.t./; NAT	Controlled assay. ( = 8) hIL-12, 6 PR; ( = 9) hIL-18, 5 PR. Both are very well tolerated.	Müller et al., 2011 [57]
4	hIL-2 +; hGM-CSF; HSV-tk	MEL	Plasmid/cationic lipid for HSV-tk + GCV. Irradiated xenogeneic hIL-2 and hGM-CSF producing cells made by plasmid lipofection	In vivo (SG) − i.t. Ex vivo (CPXC) + (TV) − s.c./+SX	( = 1) case report. Reduction of injected tumors burden. Prevention of postsurgical local relapse. Survival >600 d.	Finocchiaro et al., 2009 [55]

hIL-12, human interleukin-12; eIL-12, equine interleukin-12; hIL-18, human interleukin-18; HSV-tk, herpes simplex thymidine kinase; hIL-2, human interleukin-2; hGM-CSF, human granulocyte macrophage colony stimulating factor; MEL, melanoma; CPXC, cytokine producing xenogeneic cells; GCV, ganciclovir; SG, suicide gene; TV, tumor vaccine; i.t., intratumoral; s.c., subcutaneous; NAT, no additional treatment during or following gene therapy; SX, surgical excision; d, days.