Slashdot Mirror
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."
Well, it could have cured cancer for all, but that would threaten the integrity of our "intellectual property" system!
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Certainly it will take a while. Unfortunately, people with terminal cancer whose alternative is worse than any possible side-effects, will have to wait for further research and FDA red tape for many years.
[FromTheMorning]
With terminal patients does it really matter if side effects develop is a few years? Without the treatment they'd be dead in a few months anyway. Might as well just see what happens.
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
Is it just me or does htis sound like the Recolada virus that was created in Xenocide? (Is that a 'layman's' way to explain it?)
Well, if we're to believe the article, only cells with "an activated RAS pathway" are consistently affected by the virus. Now, I suppose that most cells don't generally have this, and that's why they are unaffected. But... are there any non-cancerous conditions in which this happens? They you've just got a very, very effective way of killing whatever set of cells that is...
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Ok, I am not a biologist, and have no scientific basis for this, but...
According to the FAQ:
4. Where does the reovirus come from?
Reovirus is found naturally in shallow pools of water, lakes or streams or in the sewage system.
So assuming that we could naturally ingest these Reoviri, would someone in a cleaner environment be at a higher risk for cancer (or more to the point, a higher risk from dieing before the Reovirus healed them)? It would be really interesting to find out that drinking bottled water and organtic foods is actually increasing the risk of death from cancer.
_______
2B1ASK1
Here is an article concerning the possiblity of using scorpion venom to cure cancer.
Reading the article (which by the way puts one in the top 1% of /. readers), it seems this reovirus is quite common, and that non-cancerous cells kill it off quite readily. I wonder though if this reovirus has ever "wandered in" on cancer cells in a patient and led to remission in that patient.
You always here anecdotal stories about some people recovering in cases where others haven't, and it's usually attributed to God, positive thinking, a close family, and so forth.
Maybe it's been these little buggers all along.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Using viruses to attack diseases is a technique from the early 20th century. It was widely used in Russia, but fell out of favor when anitbiotics were discovered. It appears to be reviving.
If you try to mimic the idea of a computer developing "anti-bodies" to combat computer viruses, would it not then be possible for the computer to inadvertantly develop a defense for legitimate code?
.
. In other words, would your computer become "allergic" to certain programs?
.
.
Not a computer expert...just thinking out loud...
.
.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I've seen the effects too -- my father died of cancer, my mother had breast cancer (caught it amazingly early fortunately), I worked on an oncology floor at a local hospital for three years, and one of my coworker's kids has leukemia (in the last stages of treatment, fortunately, and doing well).
The chemotherapy and radiotherapy is nasty, and this looks a lot better (at least, as long as it doesn't mutate as viruses are wont to do). But very few people actually die from the chemo/radiotherapy, at least not directly. A lot of people don't find out that they have cancer until the cancer is well formed. Once the cancer metastatizes and starts to spread there's very little that modern medicine can do for you (this may change that, as may the nanotech "bullets" I read about earlier today). All chemo and radiation can do at that point is attempt to minimize the suffering -- and I question that they do this for the most part.
Anyway, it's not the chemo/radiation that gets you. It's the side effects. By and large we use the same chemo drugs that we've used for decades, as well as the same radiotherapy methods. We've refined the dosages, but that's about it. Where the real breakthroughs have been is in the medicines to treat the side effects of the chemo -- nausea, dizziness, low white blood count, and so forth. And we've made strides on drugs to treat the side effects of those drugs. And so forth. Cancers that were fatal (as in 0% survival rate) twenty years ago now have an 80% survivability rate (my coworker's son is one such case). That's pretty amazing.
Even so, if there's a better solution out there, with fewer side effects, let's go for it. I hope the testing goes well. I'd also like to know what you need to do to be put on the human testing list. My sister's mother-in-law has been given less than 6 months to live, in part due to cancer that has metastatized and is pretty much everywhere now. It's likely that the cancer's done too much damage for her to recover though... and we don't have a magic bullet to cure that issue. Yet.
The problem with this "non-pathogenic" virus is that it doesn't naturally cure cancer. We had to modify it to do so. The reality of evolution is that life forms (especially simple, fast replicating ones like viruses and bacteria) tend to mutate often. What happens when we're mass producing this virus with millions of people being treated and a new strain surfaces that doesn't stop at cancerous cells?
for terminal patients.... beacuse they *may* become addicted.
*boggles*
Worse than that is this:
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- A Sandia National Laboratories researcher has discovered a material that could potentially mean a new AIDS treatment. The material, called niobium HPA, can attach itself to the AIDS virus in the bloodstream, preventing it from harming other cells. May Nyman stumbled onto it accidentally while investigating filters for liquid nuclear waste at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The idea of using the discovery for medical purposes is intriguing, said Craig Hill, a chemistry professor at Emory University in Atlanta and an expert in a class of materials called heteropolyanions, or HPAs. "If the thing has a lifetime of hours [in the blood] versus minutes or seconds, then it is very likely to have interesting anti-viral properties," said Hill, who said he would be interested in testing the material at Emory. "There's a reasonable chance that its toxicity may be fairly low."
So the big bad nuclear power plants so reviled by hippies may cure AIDS. Oh the irony.
Someone correct me if I get the bacteria or the cancer wrong but if I remember right 3rd world countries have a much lower rate of prostate cancer because they have more exposure to E Coli bacteria.
Obvioulsy big bad doses of E Coli in meat kill us so we don't want to run out and do that but you get the point.
Maybe a biologist could explain this better.
As others have pointed out here, the benefits of living in a clean environment most likely outweigh living in filth and contracting a few "beneficial" viruses.
However there is something to be said for not living in a totally pristine environment. If you lived in a bubble and had your environment completely sterilized then you would never get sick (at least not from outside agents). Thus your immune system would never get challenged and the amount and diversity of the various immunological bodies in your system would be reduced. If your bubble got compromised then you would probably get very ill very quickly.
There have been a few science fiction stories which have dealt with this. In one story that I read (I don't recall the author or the story name) there were a group of people who were on a space voyage and the doctor continually released very low-grade illnesses to challenge the crew's immune system. Just stuff like the viruses that cause sniffles or a slight sore throat, nothing that could result in a major illness. This way the crew's immune system would stay "exercised" and ready to deal with any serious illnesses, should they encounter one.
I feel that this is a good explanation for why people who live in pristinely clean environments seem to get some of the worse illnesses. Their immune systems are not challenged constantly by low-grade illnesses and so when one finally comes along it wallops them. Sure people who work closely with large groups of small children tend to get sick more often, but they seem to rarely get serious illnesses. This could be because of the same effect I have been describing.
Sapere aude!
I get plenty of US television broadcast and perhaps it doesn't happen in every case, but I've seen lots of evidence of it happening. IE. Car accident, sued for XXX million because they will 'suffer' for life. Why do you think you've had doctors striking for the cost of mal-practice insurance? After all the cost wouldn't be soo high if so many law suits were not in the millions.
No, this is
it's not necessarily different by country... it even varies by state. My state, for instance, just passed malpractice caps on noneconomic damages... and even despite that, I'm in the process of losing my malpractice insurance (despite having NO claims against me). They are dropping me like a bad habit, and if I want to stayed insured, it's going to cost me double what it was before (that's if I can even get insured).
Most of these unlabeled uses of drugs/viruses/devices are done under compassionate use protocols of one type or another. There is also "emergency use," which can even be done before clinical trials... try this link for some more info.
Even so, you should read the fine print. Even for emergency use, you still have to consult your IRB (that's "institutional review board" for you non-medical folks... they can veto what you want to do), and at least one other physician before submitting the paperwork... and who knows how long before your approval comes back? I've not personally submitted one of these (I am not an oncologist), so I won't speculate on the time frame, though I'd hope they would bypass the usual beauracratic delays.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
One of the major troubles with removing a tumour is that a small amount will remain, and the cancer will regrow. Early surgery had less of this trouble, because their hygiene wasn't so great, so during the surgery the patient was basically guaranteed to get an infection, and this would lead to fever. Since cancer cells are more sensitive to higher temperatures, the remaining few cancer cells would die of the fever, leaving the patient healthy.
So your comment is somewhat true, but not for the reason you thought.
Incidentally, I don't recommend getting a fever if you just had surgery for cancer.
THC (the active chemical in marijuana) was found to cure cancer (brain tumors, leukemia, lung and breast cancer) in 1974. Unfortunately the DEA shut down the research.
s .h tml)
(http://americanmarijuana.org/pot.shrinks.tumor
Not only can THC cure cancer, it is unbelievably non-toxic. There's no risk of causing more harm. Chemotherapy on the other hand, is extremely hard on the body.
This helps back my (otherwise unfounded) theory that too many of these anti-bacterial cleaning supplies will doom the human race. Of course, I was looking at it from the point of view that if we raise children unexposed to filth they'll be far more susceptible once they are exposed. This study gives the possibility that there may be more naturally occuring aids that we are destroying through our ignorance.
Consider: if Alexander Fleming had been more conscientious about cleaning his petri dishes, he may never have found penicillin. (Reference - I'd heard it was an accident, but never knew it was on a dish in a sink waiting to be cleaned.) Reading this article, it also occurs to me that while no one can (probably) patent a naturally occuring virus, they probably can patent an effective growing/harvesting process.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Patrick Lee, the scientist behind all of this, has been researching the reovirus for over twenty years. We (that's the University of Calgary, my alma mater) just lost him to Dalhousie University, and they haven't stopped bragging since.
When the first word of this treatment hit the papers five years ago in 1998, his colleagues at other universities (read: his competitors) were quoted saying (I'm paraphrasing) that if Patrick Lee has published, you know the science has to be solid. The peer-reviewed journals agree: he's been published in Cell, Nature, Science and Nature Cell Biology, among others.
This is the real deal. I've put my money where my mouth is, too: several thousand dollars of my own money is banking on this.
but nice try at turning a complicated issue into a cheap political shot at the intelligence of "US citizens (and Republicans)."
Malpractice lawsuits have nothing to do with the increase in premiums? Please... losses directly affect premiums in virtually any insurance arena, though not always in the short term. Notably, my state has seen its total number of malpractice insurers drop from 15-20 to only 3 in the last ten years.
Also, state law where I practice limits the amount of assets an insurance company can place in the stock market. They are required by law to keep certain amounts liquid and available to settle claims, while much of the remainder of their assets goes into the much-less-volatile bond market. This state also prevents insurers from recouping investment losses via premium hikes, thus discouraging any sort of wild futures trading, or risky investment nonsense. Many insurers used to resell policies, much like banks resell loans... but the worldwide reinsurance market has also taken a beating in the last five years, preventing insurers from reshuffling some of their exposure.
It's a complicated problem... but that doesn't mean malpractice caps are not useful. Unless, of course, you are a med-mal attorney, in which case your self-interest is obvious. My personal preference would have been to institute some form of loser-pays, or a malpractice review board made up of laymen, attorneys, and physicians of various specialties to vet lawsuits for merit BEFORE they go to trial.
Blaming it soley on evil corporations losing money in the stock market makes you sound like a ABA lobbiest.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Reovirus is known to cause cancer in lab rats :P
I'm a student at the tragically underrated University of Calgary, which has come up a few times in this discussion. In the past few years, I've followed this story quite closely - I write news for the school's undergrad paper, The Gauntlet and I covered two relevant pieces:
Story 1, June 2001
Story 2, July 2001
The first link is to the original story, which attributed the find to Dr. Peter Forsyth. Later on, Dr. Patrick Lee (who has been mentioned multiple times in this discussion) poached the research and headed for greener pastures at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
The interesting fact is that Forsyth's research found inexplicable gray spots in the residue of the destroyed tumour. At the time, I found it quite unsettling that this fact was completely ignored by the mainstream media in spite of the fact that he spent a significant portion of the press conference discussing the potential hazards that the spots could indicate, including encephalitis.
It looks like the clinical trials at Oncolytics (Forsyth and Lee were directly involved) are optimistic, showing no side-effects, but I urge everyone to temper their excitement for the time being. The allure of jumping to the conclusion that REO virus treatment is a miracle cure is significant, but the consequences of doing so could be disastrous.
This may seem like bitter cynicism, but take a hint from someone who has been on the front lines of this very discovery: the story reported by the mainstream media is never the whole story.
Patrick Boyle
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
The reovirus can be stopped by the body's immune system, but all testing so far has shown that the defence is so weak, there isn't a problem. Should their be to great an immune response, a simple short term immune suppressant (such as cyclosporin) can be used to solve the problem.
As far as the reovirus mutating, it seems that it hasn't yet over the last 4 million years or so. This is partly because it's a DOUBLE stranded RNA virus, so during replication, it has its own built in "error checking".
rjc