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Underground > Laboratory >

A virus that kills cancer?

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

17:08 / 28.11.06

Stumbled across this while doing some research for work... is this for real? I'm not very well-versed in the sciences, so for all I know this is the cold fusion of medical science -- something that gets trotted out every couple of years but invariably winds up not working.

Anyone who is knowledgeable know about the viability of this? If it's true, it's a huge thing, right?

20:39 / 28.11.06

This seems like a profound thing. You are totally right, it is utterly and impossibly heavy in it's gravity of significance. But again, this is only if it were to work or lead anywhere. I think you're right in comparing it to the 'cold fusion' trot which happens now and again. And in emphasizing this point, wasn't there something out of S.Korea recently that held amazing promise but ended international scandel?

09:53 / 29.11.06

Looking over the original paper it certainly looks like an exciting discovery. I think that the fact it is not yet being made a "big deal" of in the public press probably stems from the fact that the idea of using viruses to kill cancer isn't new, this is just the latest step (albeit a very impressive one) in developing the technology.

There are naturally occurring viruses which target tumour cells but not healthy tissue. There have also been previous attempts to use genetically engineered viruses to improve upon the action of these viruses.

One of the main problems with this technique has been the relatively poor penetration of the virus into the tumour. The real advance using relaxin is the fact that it stops the tumour producing so much of of the structural matrix between cells that impedes viral penetration as well as inducing tumour cell death.

I don't really know much about the differences in this sort of therapy when transferring between a mouse model and actually trying it out in humans so I wouldn't know how likely problems are to arise in clinical trials.

jentacular dreams

14:38 / 29.11.06

Quite impressive indeed. I don't do any animal model work either, but the mouse-lines in question seem like fairly standard oncology research stock. However, they do have some interesting properties such as improved radiation tolerance. The cancers they used were generated from human cancer cell lines (2 glioma, 1 carcinoma, 1 melonoma), so the mice in question must either be pretty well humanised or lack a full immune repertoire. The question is, how will the virus behave when the cells surrounding the tumour are also human?

Original paper here.

Just checked, the nu/nu is immunodeficient (info here.) whilst the C57BL/6 mouse does not appear to be, but is certainly not the healthiest of the inbred strains (info on C57BL/6 and other C57BL strains here). The C57BL/6 strain is naturally resistant to a number of cancers, though it is a recommended host for the melanoma used to measure metastasis.

Might forward this one around the lab. Will pass on any feedback.