Bladder Cancer 'Attacked and Killed By Common Cold Virus' (bbc.com) 51
A new study from the University of Surrey suggests that a strain of the common cold virus can infect and kill bladder cancer cells. "All signs of the disease disappeared in one patient, and in 14 others there was evidence that cancer cells had died," reports the BBC. From the report: In this study, 15 patients with the disease were given the cancer-killing coxsackievirus (CVA21) through a catheter one week before surgery to remove their tumors. When tissues samples were analyzed after surgery, there were signs the virus had targeted and killed cancer cells in the bladder. Once these cells had died, the virus had then reproduced and infected other cancerous cells - but all other healthy cells were left intact.
What the virus does is special, says study leader Prof Hardev Pandha, from the University of Surrey and Royal Surrey County Hospital. "The virus gets inside cancer cells and kills them by triggering an immune protein - and that leads to signaling of other immune cells to come and join the party," he said. Normally, the tumors in the bladder are "cold" because they do not have immune cells to fight off the cancer. But the actions of the virus turn them "hot," making the body's immune system react. The plan is now to use the common cold virus with a targeted immunotherapy drug treatment, called a checkpoint inhibitor, in a future trial in more patients.
What the virus does is special, says study leader Prof Hardev Pandha, from the University of Surrey and Royal Surrey County Hospital. "The virus gets inside cancer cells and kills them by triggering an immune protein - and that leads to signaling of other immune cells to come and join the party," he said. Normally, the tumors in the bladder are "cold" because they do not have immune cells to fight off the cancer. But the actions of the virus turn them "hot," making the body's immune system react. The plan is now to use the common cold virus with a targeted immunotherapy drug treatment, called a checkpoint inhibitor, in a future trial in more patients.
Rhinovirus killing cancer cells (Score:3, Funny)
Nothing to sneeze at.
Re:cock sack virus (Score:4, Informative)
Named for this NY village [virology.ws] where the virus was discovered when researchers were investigating the poliomyelitis virus.
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It's still amazing if it ends up curing cancer of the bladder, which is basically a sac connected to... yeah, sometimes names are accidentally awesomely apt.
Like "columbarium", the world's most accidentally onomatopoetic word.
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illegal to claim to be able to cure cancer (Score:3)
note that they didn't say "we cured cancer in these patients", because in many countries it is a criminal offense to claim to be able to cure cancer.
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"note that they didn't say "we cured cancer in these patients", because in many countries it is a criminal offense to claim to be able to cure cancer."
In other countries, it's apparently a crime when you do NOT predict an earthquake, Italy comes to mind.
Perhaps an idea for California?
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No, in Italy, they prosecuted people who when asked after a series of minor tremors if they should be worried about a big earthquake who responded with "no". As in, the people of the town affected were worried because of a series of minor tremors have hit their area the past few weeks. The people asked replied there was nothing to worry about. Then a big earthquake struck.
In
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because in many countries
Name one.
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If someone genuinely finds a cure for cancer, we'll work something out.
Until then treatments for cancer are good news.
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Part of the point is that there isn't, and will not be, a cure for cancer. There may be cures for particular kinds of cancer. Cancer is not a disease, its a syndrome. Most of the different varieties are caused by different things. And anything that could cure all of them would probably cause your skin, and the villi of your intestines, to die also. (I.e. it would kill off any cell-line that needs to reproduce relatively rapidly.)
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Part of the point is that there isn't, and will not be, a cure for cancer.
Exactly. A real cure is probably not even theoretically possible, but one comes along, it will definitely be a very special day in the history of medical science.
Suprised Pikachu (Score:3)
Microbiology is going to do as much in the next 50 years as electronics did in the last 50. The good news is that the field is becoming just as interesting and diverse. Get on the bandwagon before it starts. You ain't seen nothing yet!
Infection (Score:2)
"The plan is now to use the common cold virus with a targeted immunotherapy drug treatment, called a checkpoint inhibitor, in a future trial in more patients. "
And if that patient infects other people, they get a cancer-cure for free?
Re: Infection (Score:2)
Nice to hear those virii are useful for something. (Score:2)
Good news.
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Bladder cancer. They infected the bladder by sending the virus through a catheter. It's not quite injecting it directly into the tumor, but it's about as close as you can get without a needle.
The common cold normally mostly affects the nose, because that's where the virus can reach before the immune system stomps it into the ground. But ultimately, if a virus is capable of binding to a type of receptor that appears on a wide range of human cells, then a cell is a cell is a cell, and it can bind to, for
This allows reinterpretation of many movie scenes (Score:1)
Mr. Smith: Humans are a virus.
Morpheus: Oh, thank you.
Double-edged Sword (Score:2)
The real skinny (Score:5, Informative)
Actual scientific article is at DOI:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-18-4022.
Phase 1 prospective cohort trial with 15 enrolled patients undergoing primary resective surgery for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. Primary endpoint is patient safety; they report no "significant toxicities" from therapy.
Secondary endpoint: evidence of tumor inflammation and viral changes. They show inflammation-related changes in treated patients and resolution of tumor in 1 out of 15 patients.
There's no comparison arm; clinically important measures of efficacy like progression-free survival and overall survival were not assessed. The major aim of the study is to justify phase II/III trials down the road.
COI: one of the authors has received funding from Viralytics and several other authors work for Viralytics. Viralytics funded the study.
There is no way a study like this should receive anything like the headline or coverage it's gotten. It is a phase 1 study only without clinically relevant efficacies reported and without a comparison arm. The power to detect uncommon but not even rare adverse effects is low.
mod parent up (Score:1)
Re:The real skinny ... context (Score:1)
This is treatment of bladder cancer with a virus with the intention of stimulating the immune system. A similar treatment with Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, a germ related to tuberculosis, already exists.
I presume that a successuful treatment with a rhinovirus would be very preferable because it would have less severe side-effects and the risks associated with infecting other people would be lower.
What now? (Score:2)
They kill the cells _and_ they snitch on them to the immune system?
How is that possible, if they kill the cell no need to snitch on it, if the snitch on them, then no need to kill them.
Or are they just using loud guns that the immune police can hear?
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"The virus gets inside cancer cells and kills them by triggering an immune protein - and that leads to signaling of other immune cells to come and join the party,"
Literally in the summary...
So we give your bladder a cold. (Score:2)
Okay...
Funny. And promising!
Cool. Radio waves have the liver covered. (Score:2)
That's two targeted treatments for major organs down. Now to only see it make it to the masses.
https://medicalxpress.com/news... [medicalxpress.com]
I'm old enough to remember a lot of people along the way that were ridiculed for trying to use radio waves to treat cancer.
can't be unique (Score:2)
If this turns out to be verifiable, it's pretty impressive. We've known about oncolytic viruses for quite some time, but the common frikin cold? If cold viruses kill this type of cancer, I'm gonna hypothesize that it's probably not the only type....
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Would be funny if we one day "cure" the common cold and end up with increased rates of respiratory cancers as a result though.
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"Cold and several other families of viruses have been a target of cancer research for a couple of decades now. While there have been successful studies, I don't think anything has made it past clinical trials yet. "
Of course not, that would potentially interfere with the cash flow on existing dangerous and expensive 'treatments'. Once they find a way to charge $100k for a shot of the common cold though I expect it to become mainstream. ;)
Yeah, I'm a cynic. Industry bred me to be one. :P
Actually it doesn't interfere with that at all. It would still have to go through drug approvals, and it would also be patentable. First to market would have a 7 year head start from that alone.