Fighting Cancer With The Common Cold?

Roland Piquepaille writes "After 30 years of work, Saint Louis University researchers have genetically engineered a common cold virus to fight cancerous cells while leaving unaffected healthy ones. They received a patent for this research and clinical tests on humans will start soon, according to this news release. Dr. William Wold, chair of the department of molecular microbiology and immunology, received the patent No. 6,627,190 for his work. Preclinical testing has already been done so clinical trials should start soon. We can only hope they will be successful. This overview contains many more details and references about this potential cure for all kinds of cancer. [Note: this is a very different project from the one mentioned by a previous Slashdot post.]"

Comments

Obligatory

[Grave]

They can cure cancer but they can't cure the common cold?!

Re:Obligatory

[Justin205]

They can cure cancer but they can't cure the common cold?!

No, no, no. They could if they tried, but they need the common cold to cure the cancer. What do you want? A cold, or cancer?

Re:Obligatory

[SEE]

Priorities?

Viagra was designed and developed in a research effort that was originally looking for anti-hypertension drugs, and was later refocused on anti-angina drugs. While the stage II clinical trial showed it was not as effective as hoped, it did discover a curious side effect. The priority was not to create an impotency drug; that was a foruitous side effect of what was otherwise seven years of wasted research and funding.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'm conflicted again

[BiggerIsBetter]

It's great that this is possible, but I'm not sure it should be patented. What ever happened to research for the good of mankind, and academic recognition?

I know medical research is expensive and all, and inventors/researchers need protection from having their ideas stolen, but what it means is that the technology can be held to ransom by the patent holder. "Yes we can save you, but it'll cost you $5000 a week for the rest of your life, etc."

Dupe flameproofing

[Anonymous Coward]

[Note: this is a very different project from the one mentioned by a previous Slashdot post.]

How ironic that story submitters are now feeling the need to add flameproofing like this to their submissions, in fear of the duplicate article police.

Antibiotics Cause Cancer

[yintercept]

If you look at the historical records, you will see a marked jump in the percent of people who die of cancer after the introduction of antibiotics. Food does the same thing. In times of famine and wars (for that matter) very few people die of cancer.

does that mean the Cold kicks Cancers ass for most annoying thing to get in you?

It makes sense to fight disease with disease.

There's a whole ecosystem of single celled creatures living inside people. Some things like acidophilous are quite good for the system. IMHO, the occasional cold seems to help keep the immune system in tune.

I think it is healthier to think in terms of maintaining a good balance in the ecosystem than to try and prevent all exposure to disease. Personally, I avoid antibiotics except for extreme diseases. BTW, when people do take antibiotics, they need to take the full subscription, other wise you will turn into a fun little biology experiment where the germs resistent to the anti-biotic can work on their evolution. I read arguments by some doctors that think the government should curtail the use of antibiotics to extreme cases so that we can halt the evolution of antibiotic resistent diseases.

Re:Antibiotics Cause Cancer

[corbettw]

If you look at the historical records, you will see a marked jump in the percent of people who die of cancer after the introduction of antibiotics.

Hmm, wonder if that's because people are suddenly *not* dying of cholera, tuberculosus, or the plague?

Food does the same thing. In times of famine and wars (for that matter) very few people die of cancer.

Wow, in times of famine, people don't die from cancer? Too bad they're all busy dying of starvation, they could've lived forever!

Too bad you had to lead off with such bizarre statements, since I find myself nodding to just about everything else (including the critique of the overuse of anti-biotics, and that getting the sniffles once in awhile is a good thing).

Adding two and two

[kimmop]

Altough this is a good achivement it's no scientific breakthrough. If you're interested please read the description section from the patent It's quite well written and understandable.

There's few things you have to know about viruses and cancer to understand this thing:

First: The viruses (adenoviruses to be specific) work by infecting the host (human) cell and by forcing the host to replicate the viral DNA and to produce the proteins coded in the DNA. After few days of this, a lot of new viruses form inside the host cell and the cell gets broken up (lysed) relasing a lot of new viruses to infect the nearby cells.

Second: Cancer is uncontrolled replication of cells. Actually quite many genes must be deactivated (like p53) and activated (like telomerase) to produce a bad type (neoplastic) tumor. The telomerase is needed in the cancer cells because it extends the ends of the chromosomes in the cell after each replication, thus allowing a cell to replicate more.

Prior art: Some people have taken the promoter (DNA sequence that activates a gene) from human telomerase and put it in an adenovirus (that was mutated to be non-replicating) together with cell-suicide inducing gene. By infecting a cancer cell with this virus, you can kill it nicely if the cell expresses telomerase (i.e. is replicated i.e. is a cancer cell)

The problem with the prior art is that producing non-replicating viruses is difficult and expensive and you have to infect all of the cells more or less individually.

Invention: Use the telomerase promoter to drive a gene required for the DNA replication in the virus. This way the virus will kill (by lysis) the cancer cells and infect the other cells nearby but will not lyse the healthy (telomerase-deactive) cells.

Even though this is not a major scientific breakthrough I still hope this works and think it's clearly worth a patent.