SF med center to use gene therapy

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SF med center to use gene therapy

Sunday, January 13, 2008 | 11:23 AM

Bay City News

California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco announced this week that it

has reportedly become the first medical research institute to use a

gene-silencing therapy to treat hepatitis B.

California Pacific teamed up with Pennsylvania-based Nucleonics Inc., along with

other investigators, to test a method of helping people suffering from the

hepatitis B virus, which is the second leading cause of cancer worldwide.

" This is an exciting time, and a potentially important new way of helping people

battle what can be a deadly disease, " said Gish, medical director of the

Liver Disease Management & Transplant Program at California Pacific Medical

Center.

When hepatitis B infects a liver cell it creates a strand of genetic material

called RNA and then uses that material to turn the cell into a mini hepatitis B

factor, essentially churning out new copies of the virus, which spread

throughout the liver.

This new therapy prevents the virus from multiplying by effectively paralyzing

it and making it unable to create infectious virus particles.

An estimated 2 million Americans are chronically infected with hepatitis B,

according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most people who

have chronic hepatitis B infections undergo life-long therapy to keep the virus

at bay. If left unchecked, it can cause cirrhosis or scarring of the liver,

liver cancer, liver failure and even death in one out of four people infected

with the virus.

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local & id=5888412#bodyText

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