Viruses (The Good Kind)

This news story came out just about a week ago, but didn't receive a whole lot of attention. My mom alerted me to it, and then I heard something about it briefly on the radio. Not sure why it's not generating more excitement....

As reported by Yahoo! News, viruses can potentially be used to kill cancer cells. In a small study (23 patients), researchers manipulated a virus used in the smallpox vaccine so that it could target cancer cells. Cancer cells have a defect that makes them more susceptible to viruses. This virus makes its way into the cancer cell, where it basically becomes a parasite, replicating (as viruses do) and taking over the tumor, killing it. The virus, though, apparently doesn't harm other, healthy cells.

In the study, eight of the patients patients received high doses of the virus; seven of the eight had the virus replicate in only the tumor, but not in healthy cells; and six had their tumors shrink or stop growing.

This seems like a promising avenue for more research. The study was meant to measure safety -- to show that this virus could be an effective delivery system. The next step will be to figure out what exactly the virus should deliver: what kind of treatment can be attached to the virus. It will likely need to be something genetic -- a gene that can replicate along with the virus (rather than, say, a dose of chemo, which would run out once the virus starting reproducing).

Promising. Lots to do, still, but it seems like once a first step like this is figured out, things pick up fairly quickly.