Evaluation of Safety of Rexin-G Gene Transfer for Advanced Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Every year, about 30,000 new patients are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and most will die within the year. The few patients that live beyond one year are those who have operable tumors whose cancer has not spread beyond the pancreas. There is no effective treatment for pancreatic cancer that impacts survival beyond a few more months. Therefore, innovative treatments are urgently needed. A number of experimental therapies are currently under investigation, and gene therapy is a viable therapeutic option. A gene called cyclin G1 has been shown to play a very important part in cancer growth. In animal experiments, when this cyclin G1 gene is blocked, the cancer cells grow much slower or even die. This study will test the drug, Rexin-G, which contains a gene that works by getting rid of the cyclin G1 gene. The new gene will get into the tumor cells using a "vehicle" to carry it into the cells. The "vehicle" that will be used is a virus that has been changed so that it is not likely to cause disease. This "vehicle" is called a vector. When injected into a vein, the Rexin-G vector is designed to seek out and accumulate in cancerous tumors, therefore, increasing the concentration of the drug in the area of the cancer and not in normal neighbouring organs. When the killer gene gets into the cancer cell, it becomes part of the cell's genes and tells the cancer cell to begin using the new gene instead of the cyclin G1 gene. It is hoped that the Rexin-G will arrest the growth of the cancer or eradicate the tumor. The goals of the study are to determine how much Rexin-G can be given to a patient, to assess how long Rexin-G stays in the body when injected into a vein, and if the drug would cause antibodies to form, transfer the gene to normal tissues or pass on the gene to another person or the person's offspring. The final goal is to determine if the Rexin-G vector can shrink the tumor by comparing the size of the tumor nodules measured by CT scan or MRI before and after the Rexin-G treatment.