1. French Anderson predicts by 2020 “virtually very disease will have gene therapy as one of its treatments”.

2. Paul Berg believes that all diseases are genetic in nature.

3. By 1993, there were 40 gene therapy trials. By 1996, this number grew to 200, involving 1,500 patients. About 30 diseases are being studied, approximately half of them involving cancer. Gene therapy experiments absorb $200 million of the National Institute of Health (NIH) budget.

4. Medicine is being trust into the third stage by bimolecular revolution. We are entering the stage of molecular medicine. For the first time, in history each level of pathogenesis, protein for protein, molecule for molecule, even atom for atom, is being revealed. Medicine is moving from the antibiotic era to the vista of the molecular age.

5. There are 200 forms of cancer. Cancer cells have lost their ability to stop dividing; they are the immortal cell. In the US, cancer kills about half a million people a year. Cancer research is active; Dennis Salmon, says “this is the most exciting time imaginable”

6. 30 percent of cancers can be trace to cigarette smoking. 70 to 90 percent, of all cancers can be correlated to the environment and lifestyle.

7. There are two major kinds of genes involved with cancer: oncogenes and tumor suppressors. To understanding how it works think about a speeding car with a accelerator (oncogenese) and brake (tumor suppressor). The car can go out of control if the oncogene gets stuck or the tumor suppressor becomes defective.

8. Scientist have found 50 types of oncogenes for cancer including the gene code for protein p-21. P-21 weights 21,000 atomic units or as much as 21,000 hydrogen atoms.

9. Faulty p53 is found in 52 common forms of cancer: 90 percent of cervical cancer, 80 percent of colon cancer, 40 to 60 percent of ovarian cancer, 35 to 60 percent of all bladder cancers, and 50 percent of brain cancers. Mutations of p53 is located on the short arm of chromosome 17 and can occur at a 100 sites along the gene. The defect can take twenty to forty years to form because a series of multiple mutations must occur before the growth mechanism is disrupted.

10. p53 protein eventually initiates cell suicide, apoptosis to prevent genetically damaged cell from growing out of control. p53 gene can be insert into an adenovirus vector. The adenovirus is injected into the tumor. The tumor does not die, but shows a stabilization.

11. Advexin therapy combines p53 tumor suppressor with an adenovirus vector delivery system. Advexin clinical trials look promising and FDA fast track is in progress.

12. One reason why scientist feel confident in predicting the whole classes of cancer may be curable by 2020 is that most cancers are caused by mutations in a handful of genes.

13. 400,000 Americans die of lung cancer each year.

14. Telomeres control the life of the cell. Telomeres have the genetic sequence TTAGGG repeated over and over. The older the cell the shorter the telomere. The cell has a timer, losing 10 to 20 segments every time it divides. Some cancers have the ability to manufacture telomerase preventing the telomeres from disappearing and thereby making the cell immoral.

15. Telomerase therapy kill cancer by stopping the production of cancer cells without harming healthy cells. Telomerase therapy prevents the cancer from re-lengthening the telomeres repeated at the end of the DNA.