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Killing Cancer With a Virus
just___giver writes "The U.S. National Cancer Institute has just decided to fund multiple human clinical studies to test the reovirus. This naturally occuring virus has a remarkable ability to infect and kill cancer cells, without affecting normal, healthy cells. Here is a before and after picture of a terminal patient with an actively growing neck tumour that had failed to respond to conventional treatments. This tumour was eliminated with only a single injection of the Reovirus. Researchers at Oncolytics Biotech have shown that the Reovirus can kill many types of cancer, including breast, prostate, pancreatic and brain tumours. Human clinical trial results indicate that there are no safety concerns and that the reovirus shrinks and even eliminates tumours injected with this virus. Numerous other third party studies show that the reovirus should be an important discovery in the treatment of 2/3 of all human cancers."
i find these as very very welcome news, especially so that i have personally seen the effects of conventional therapies; if you're lucky you'll have a tumor they can cut out, if not then too many of those chemotherapies are way too toxic, and quite a few radiotherapies too.
Hope this clarifies things.
This is a virus that exists in the wild. It's not some sort of designer human pathogen. In the family of reoviruses are enteroviruses such as rotavirus, the most common cause of diarrhea in children.
I may be out of date in my medical knowledge... but I'm pretty sure cancers can only develop an immunity in a single person over a course of treatment, and can't spread like a virus or bacteria to other people carrying the acquired immunity with it.
After all, cancers aren't transmitted between people, they spontaneously appear for a variety of reasons.
Typically, virii (or viruses, whatever) manifest their effects realtively quickly, due largely in part to the nature of the virus life cycle.
In addition, if the virus only responds to the receptors found on cancer cells (which is, I imagine, how it works), then there is next to no chance of it ever infecting normal healthy cells.
Though, I agree...this should be studied for a couple of more years, just to be on the safe side. However, I'm nigh positive that this could lead to a definitive cancer cure.
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But ethically dubious experiments in which prisoners were injected with reovirus found that infection caused at most mild flu-like symptoms. Many people have been infected by reovirus as children with little effect more than a runny nose.
That text comes from section 3 of this article. So it would seem that the answer to your question was determined quite some time ago.
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It "partially" works because you have antibodies to the virus already. Your body recognizes the particles of virus as a "bad guy" and while the virus tends to attack the tumor cells, the body itself is eliminating the virus and any tumor cells infected with it.
However, it appears that the virus itself is fairly effective at killing of tumor cells on it's own which is fairly interesting. As it's not associated with any pathogenesis this is definately an interesting step.
Yes you can get infected more than once, hell you can get reinfected over and over again. If you have antibodies it'll probably be a fairly asymptomatic infection (pardon my spelling).
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"its proprietary formulation of the human reovirus".
Yes, but this research was started before the formation of the biotech company which now holds the rights and has been pretty well documented, so that seems a bit unlikely to me.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals."
Compassionate use protocols for some drugs... for people who are terminally ill and have nothing to lose by trying risky, untested drugs.
They've been using this in HIV patients for years. The only reason I could see them being more hesitant to treat cancer patients in a like manner is this: there ARE treatments for cancer that are curative... most all the treatments for HIV simply buy time... they do not eliminate the disease. Chemo is extraordinarily unpleasant, but it does have a proven track record...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Here is info about FDA clincical drug testing policy. Phase 1 = This is the initial test in humans for safety. This phase is to rule out inherently dangerous drugs that were not caught in the animal tests. Since we are different species this is absolutely necessary. Of course, some medications were ruled out in the animal phase which might have worked very well in humans. Common aspirin fits this picture. Aspirin causes abortions of mice and rat fetuses. Under todays rules aspirin could never reach the human testing stage. Phase 2 = This is the efficacy trial. To make sure it does what the drug company claims. This and Phase 1 are usually small numbers of people. Phase 3 = This is the large test and currently obesity control medicines are required to turn in 2 years of data. All other medications are required to turn in a one year study. This tests how the drug will act in long term usage. Earlier tests usually were for only one to three months in duration. What is the best way to use the medication? This is the last Phase before FDA marketing approval. After this phase the studies conducted by the companies and others are given to a subcommittee of experts to review. If the subcommittee reviews and approves the medication it is passed to the FDA for final approval. Usually the full FDA committee follows the panel of experts advice. CLINICAL TESTING IN HUMANS Number of Patients in each study Length of study Purpose of study Percent of Drugs Successfully Tested Phase 1 20-100 Several months Mainly safety 70 percent Phase 2 Up to several hundred Several months to 2 years Some short-term safety, but mainly effectiveness 33 percent Phase 3 Several hundred to several thousand 1-4 years Safety, effectiveness, dosage 25-30 percent Marketing = After final approval by the FDA the medication is manufactured and distributed to pharmacies and physicians. It is then available for you to use. One pharmacist said the process takes about 6 weeks after final approval. Another source said it can take up to two years. Phase 4 = Any after-market studies recommended by the FDA or performed by the companies. This is where we go from having a few thousand people take the medicine to having millions of people taking it. And this is where any very rare side-effects may show up.
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When you are trying to fight cancer with an adenovirus, like a particularly nasty common cold, you get a mutated adenovirus that seems to copy itself only in cells that lack a functioning copy of a gene called p53 that repairs damaged or mutated DNA. If the DNA is then too smashed up to be repaired, p53 instructs the cell to self-destruct. Since cancer occurs when DNA becomes so badly battered that it stops regulating cell growth and behavior, it is not surprising p53 has stopped working in more than half of human tumors..
Actually, the FAQ linked to by the article has a very simple description of how it works:
So in fact, it can and does infect normal cells; but it's so weak that it never causes any problem. Elsewhere on the FAQ it says that most humans show evidence of having been infected by it at some time (it's a naturally occuring virus).
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Radiation on the other hand is far MORE of a surgical strike approach. The radiate just the tumor area, not the entire body.
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You're obviously not familiar with the law, at all.
There are very clear doctrines in many states regarding Assumption of Risk. So long as the doctor makes it very clear to the patient that the cure is only possible, and it there might be outrageous side-effects anyway, the doc should be fine.
Unless, of course, the doc lied / misrepresented facts to get a new treatment tested--in which case, the doc should pay.
Phages are viruses that attack bacteria, not the cells of our body. The "old Soviet research" is an alternative to antibiotics, not a type of cancer therapy.
This startup is using a naturally-occuring virus to kill cells with compromised anti-virus defenses. It just so happens that many cancer cells are so compromised.
Neat work! But definitely not the same.
--Anil
Blatant astroturfing: this article is hyping a completely unproven treatment, and was written by an employee of the company. This is news? Every biotech company has a "promising" anti-cancer treatment in development.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
That may well be true, but just because the "doc should be fine" (emphasis mine) doesn't mean that the hospital/clinic and/or manufacturer of the drug won't be forced to defend against lawsuits anyway.
Even the thought of having to defend against such a suit may well be enough to stop a lot of places from doing this. Such a waste.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Speaking personally, I just underwent surgery and am awaiting radiation for a tumor. I would have much prefer to have gotten an injection, a severe cold, no tumor, and the continued use of an important body part. But I was not selected for such a study and couldn't have paid for the drug anyway. Such is life. I am just glad that my prognosis is good and hope that the virus will be approved as soon as is scientifically appropriate.
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And you don't infect the entire patient if you can get at the tumor:
In Scientific American, their article shows a picture of a 19 year old kid who died from a bad reaction from the virsuses he was being treated with. The teen and his family knew the risks, and the took it, and no one got sued.
Here in America that doesn't happen either.
Here's some interesting reading: OverLawyered.com
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The lab at which I'm doing my Honours research project just made the front page on October's issue of Cancer Cell for doing work similar to this, only using vesicular stomatitis virus. The group on the lab bench across from me is working on oncolytic adenovirus.
It's shameful that the companies who make the most press releases get the most attention.
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Gee, reovirus will CURE CANCER! And Longhorn will CHANGE YOUR EXPERIENCE on the INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY!!!
As Doktor Memory said, the post contains no links to substantive biology articles, no discussion of the long and checkered history of attacks on the Ras pathway, and little information about what is actually going on. If you want real information go look at the PubMed on 'reovirus ras'.
It'll be great if reovirus increases survival rates in Ras cancers, but it will not be a magic bullet and it could easily fail final clinical trials for one reason or another. It just ain't over 'til it's over in the pharmaceutical industry.
Can you give any proof of the link between IRBs (or HSCs) and the AMA? Since IRBs exist at institutions to review reseach done at institutions, it would stand to reason that the people submitting proposals on research done on humans to the IRB would, in fact, have degrees, since they work there. Since this applies t all human research, psychologists, too (for example) have to get IRB approval - and I don't believe that most sports physiologists (another example) or psychologists have anything to do with the AMA. Since the IRB exists to prevent research that harms the subject, like the Tuskegee experients, for example, I am puzzled by your assertion that it exists to drive up health care costs. Can you please clarify or give any proof? Thanks!
On the Oncolytics web site, they only list Phase I and Phase II trials. That's just to evaluate safety and dosing. In Phase III, they finally get around to testing for effectiveness, and they haven't done that yet.
I've seen lots of drugs that did this well in Phase II trials but flunked Phase III. I remember seeing Fortune magazine with the headline on the cover, "Cure for Cancer!" 20 years ago. Unfortunately not. (They got over-enthusiastic about cancer vaccines.)
Phase III is a randomized controlled trial. They randomly assign half the patients to the drug, and half the patients to a placebo. If it really works, you should see the difference. A lot of times it doesn't work and you know the drug is useless. Until the RCT you don't know anything for sure.
Another distinction you have to make is the end point. It's one thing to shrink a tumor, but the main thing most cancer patients are interested in is whether they're going to die. There are a lot of drugs that shrink tumors, but have no effect on how long they live.
Here's a discussion, "Levels of Clinical Evidence in the Primary Literature" which describes the different levels of evidence. Or look at BMJ Or if you want to search Google look for "Evidence-based medicine."
I hope this will encourage investors to throw lots of money at basic research and give us a better understanding of why cells become cancerous. It makes the New England Journal of Medicine more fun to read. Who knows? Maybe they'll come up with something useful some day. But not today.
Back then, the average life expectancy was so low because of infant mortality. People who got to puberty didn't, on average, die much younger than people do nowadays.
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