They discover a virus that kills all known types of cancer

Scientists reveal how this new virus works and when they will begin testing in humans.

A team of scientists led by Yuman Fong has designed a new virus based on cowpox, which has been shown to have the ability to kill cells that produce all known types of cancer.

The treatment is called CF33, and it was developed by the Australian biotech company Imugene, which has licensed its cancer-fighting innovation. The vaccine is a double-stranded DNA virus from the Poxviridae family.

After Professor Fong conducted a series of studies and designed the virus, it was found that it could shrink all kinds of tumors in mice. So he traveled to Australia to plan human trials, which they estimate will begin early next year.

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The clinical trials will include patients with triple negative breast cancer, melanoma, lung cancer, bladder, gastric and intestinal cancer. In this way, researchers could identify where treatment is most effective.

"There was evidence that viruses could kill cancer since the early 1900s, when people vaccinated against rabies saw their cancer go into remission," Fong explained.

Viruses have been used for cancer in decades past, but they failed because they were too toxic. Other treatments can only treat cancers in specific cells such as skin or liver tissue, the Australian news outlet reported.

"The problem was, if you made the virus toxic enough to kill cancer, you were concerned that it would kill the man as well," Fong said.

treatment
The oncolytic virus, as it is known, will be injected into cancer patients directly into their tumors, where it is expected to infect cancer cells and explode them.

The virus should then alert the immune system that there are cancer cells in the body; This will cause the immune cells to search for and kill the malignant cells.

Hope in science
Although the fact that the treatment works in mice does not guarantee that it will have positive effects in humans, Professor Fong has high expectations with this virus, since in recent years other viruses have been shown to be effective in fighting certain types of cancer in humans .

For example, they have used the virus that causes the common cold to kill brain cancer. Others used a modified form of the herpes virus to treat melanoma.

Publication Date: 2019-11-10

Source: Mundo LR