[Target therapy for CML--applying maxizyme].

Hammerhead type ribozyme, which have been frequently used for the purpose of specifically cleaving RNA at the GUC triplets in the experimental setting, can not be generally applicable for the gene therapy of leukemia with gene translocation. This is because the translocated sequence does not necessarily have the GUC triplets at the site of translocation. The introduction of new strategy which can specifically digest the chimera gene is considered to open new leukemia therapy with gene translocation. Maxizyme, a newly developed heterodimeric shortened ribozymes, can theoretically digest any types of chimeric genes at the site of translocation. In this review, our interesting results suggested the possible application of this maxizyme system for the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia with bcr/abl gene translocation.