In addition to surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, there may now be an additional treatment modality for cancers: dual gene therapy.

In a preclinical study, two tumor-suppressing genes, packaged in a nanoparticle delivery system, were intravenuously administered and has been shown to reduce the number by and size of human non-small cell lung cancer tumors in mice by 75-80%.

The genes wrapped in the nanoparticles were p53, a well-known tumor suppressor that works by causing defective cells to commit suicide and is often shut down or defective in cancer cells, and FUS1, a tumor-suppressor discovered by the research group that is deficient in most human lung cancers. Each nanoparticle carried one of the two genes.

Read more about the methodology and further findings from the MD Anderson Cancer Center news release.