| Background & Objective: Glioma, especially malignant glioma is the most common primary tumor in the CNS, carrying a poor prognosis. In addition, malignant gliomas frequently produce profound and progressive disability and lead to death in most cases. Fewer than 5% of patients survive longer than 5 years after diagnosis. Surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy, and combined treatments are common modalities in each section. With the development of molecular biology and gene engineering techniques, many kinds of therapeutic methods such as gene therapy are being intensively investigated in various laboratories of worldwide. Introducing a suicide gene into malignant tumor cells proposes an attractive approach for human gene therapy. Suicide genes typically encode for nonmammalian enzymes that convert nontoxic prodrugs into highly toxic metabolites. Therefore, systemic application of the nontoxic prodrug results in the production of the active drug at the tumor site. Escherichia coli...
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