A "huge milestone": approval of cancer-hunting virus signals new treatment era

The Guardian ^ | 11-2-2015 | Nicky Woolf

[Ellendra]

A new cancer treatment strategy is on the horizon that experts say could be a game-changer and spare patients the extreme side effects of existing options such as chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy and other current cancer treatments are brutal, scorched-earth affairs that work because cancer cells are slightly - but not much - more susceptible to the havoc they wreak than the rest of the body. Their side effects are legion, and in many cases horrifying – from hair loss and internal bleeding to chronic nausea and even death.

But last week the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the first time approved a single treatment that can intelligently target cancer cells while leaving healthy ones alone, and simultaneously stimulate the immune system to fight the cancer itself.

[Quality_Not_Quantity]

First, thanks for posting.

Second, thanks for searching.

[i_robot73]

And the kiss of death: the ‘approval’ of the FDA...

I’m sure, w/out the govt, we’d be finding side-benefits, offshoots, maybe even a cure, if terminal humans were given the ability to test these drugs. ‘Cuz you’re damn skippy if I’m on my death bed, I wouldn’t grab at any opportunity to stay a bit longer for myself, family, loved ones, friends...

I’ve always had a feeling we’d eventually hear/find out, “We found the cure to X, which originally was rejected because of failures during animal testing. It was when we developed Y, did we notice the pattern for X...”

[Tired of Taxes]

Thanks, BykrBayb and Smokin' Joe, for the ping!

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[Tired of Taxes]

Not called the Krippin Virus I hope...

:-) Under the news story, one of the commenters posted: "Wasn't this the plot to the movie version of I Am Legend?" lol

[Tired of Taxes]

'Cuz you're damn skippy if I'm on my death bed, I wouldn't grab at any opportunity to stay a bit longer for myself, family, loved ones, friends...

Same here. So many people have died waiting for treatments to be approved. How many pleaded to try something, anything, only to be denied the treatment because they didn't fit the exact conditions of a clinical trial?

[Tired of Taxes]

Ever read the stories of patients who suddenly, unexplainably, go into remission? And the doctors themselves can’t understand why? I wonder whether a virus is the reason.

[Bob434]

how soon before it’s marketed? It’s such a major deal now to get thigns approved and actually out to the market-

[Bob434]

[[Cancer is far more survivable today than it was thirty years ago.]]

Only really in early stage- later stages the odds of success aren’t too much improved I don’t think- I could be wrong

[SeaHawkFan]

I was at a patient seminar for prostate cancer at MD Anderson four months ago.

There has been tremendous progress made in the treaing of prostate cancer and a cure will be found in either immunotherapy, viral therapy, or both.

[redleghunter]

Thanks for posting.

[nikos1121]

bittt

[nikos1121]

bittt

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

BFL

[Ellendra]

To be honest, I’ve been looking at viral therapy for a while now. My “research” is done with pen and paper instead of a lab, but I believe the answer is close.

There’s a research lab in FL that specializes in finding aptomers that bind to a specific cancer and nothing else. It seems like it should be possible to use that when engineering an anti-cancer virus.

What I was toying with was a virus that not only included that aptomer, but also had 10 different “stop” buttons. Things like vulnerability to a certain medication, protein markers for something the immune system would target, that sort of thing. That way even if it mutated, it could be stopped.

But then, like I said, that’s only on paper. I figured if I ever came up with something I could send it to a real researcher. Instead, all I have are notebooks filled with gibberish.

I do strange things when I’m bored.

[Secret Agent Man]

Oh yeah, better diagnostics can catch things earlier.

But in terms of the treatments, chemo and rad numbers havent changed much. The things they are now looking at to improve are based on whats been workingmon the outside of the conventiomal chemo/rad protocol. That dont get hundreds of millions in fundraising, are not on insurance coverage, and have been for a long time shunned and panned by the med establishment.

[BykrBayb]

When facing death by cancer, five extra months is a big deal.

[Ozark Tom]

Malaria discovery for treating cancer.

http://news.ubc.ca/2015/10/13/destructive-disease-shows-potential-as-a-cancer-treatment/

[Ellendra]

It's designed to be injected into a tumor.

I was thinking about that part, and realized that with the way a virus replicates, injecting it into a tumor makes the most sense.

If the virus can only infect cancer cells, then that means it can only reproduce using cancer cells. From what I understand about viral engineering (take with a grain of salt), scientists can't engineer the body of the virus itself. What they do is print out the DNA* for the virus, and then inject that into an incubator cell. The DNA then does what virus DNA will do, which is to hijack the cell and force it to build virus bodies for it.

When the incubator cell bursts, it may only have made a few copies of the virus. (The exact number depends on a whole host of factors.) If you injected those copies directly into the bloodstream, it would be a race to see if one of them could find and infect a cancer cell before the immune system killed it. On the other hand, if you take the incubator cell before it bursts, and inject it directly into a tumor, then when the viruses emerge they'll be surrounded by eligible cells. They can infect and reproduce right off the bat, before the immune system realizes they're there. By the time they then spread to the bloodstream, there would be millions of them. They could flood the body in search of cancer cells before the immune system could ramp up enough to stop them.

Add in some mild immune-suppresing drugs, and the chances of the virus succeeding get even better.

*I'm assuming any engineered anti-cancer viruses will be DNA-based, since they mutate at a much slower rate than the RNA-based viruses.