Our Products
Gene Therapy
The aim of suicide gene therapy is to render unwanted cells such as cancer cells more sensitive to chemotherapeutics by introducing "suicide genes". Suicide genes encode enzymes that activate specific prodrugs to create toxic products. A bystander effect is required, by which transfected tumor cells appear to be capable of inducing the death of neighboring untransfected cells. This bystander effect can be enhanced by the introduction of gap junctions into the cells through the expression of connexin genes.
Gene delivery vectors often contain elements of viral or bacterial origins. which are immunostimulatory leading to a rapid decline of transgene expression in vivo. The immunostimulatory effect comes from unmethylated CpG dinucleotides in specific sequence contexts, called CpG motifs. InvivoGen has generated the first plasmidic vectors totally devoid of CpG. These CpG-free plasmids are designed for sustained expression in vivo of CpG-free genes, or for targeted gene silencing through RNA interference.