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."

Comments

Re:How do they know?

[sosume]

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..

Slashdot editors: still asleep at the wheel.

[Doktor Memory]

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.

Re:good...

[CrackHappy]

I had cancer. Thank God they were able to cut it out. I can't stress enough the importance of getting your ass to the doctor if you even suspect something is wrong. All you young men out there, listen up. Testicular cancer is MOST LIKELY to strike between the ages of 25-35. Also note, 98% of ALL masses detected in testicles are cancerous. In other words, when fondling yourself, if you notice anything weird at all, especially anything hard, get yourself checked by your doctor ASAP. Also note Testicular cancer is one of the fastest spreading cancers, but also the easiest to cure, IF it's caught early enough.

The treatment sucks, but it's better than dying!

Re:Okay, lets try it then...

[Walter Wart]

There are many other concerns among them are:

1. How much of the experimental agent do you have? These things are often expensive, rare and certainly not covered by insurance
   
2. You have to pick your subjects carefully if you want to get useful results. The point of a study is to study.
   
3. There are compassionate exemptions. Later posts by "The Tyro" go into these in great detail.
   
4. Liability. How do you guard against lawsuits if the treatment has unforseen side effects? Waivers can be fought.
   
5. By the time a person is terminal he or she is often not a good candidate for a haircut much less an experimental drug or procedure. Getting back to the limited supplies and "do no harm" principles someone has to decide whether the experimental substance is better given to someone who has a better chance of survival.
   

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.

It's only Phase II, not ready for prime time

[nbauman]

This work is scientifically very interesting but it's a long way from curing cancer.

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.