Breakthrough in Cancer Treatment: Injecting Virus That Hunts Tumor Cells

The Food and Drug Administration has finally approved the new and possibly NIH which involves an injection of a herpes virus. This virus plays a double role in the process of treatment because it supports and encourages the immune system in its efforts to fight and eliminate tumor while fighting tumor and protecting healthy cells. A week ago, the FDA gave a green light to this therapy which was labeled as “smart” therapy by many experts. According to the team behind this discovery, the therapy will spare the sufferers from the awful side effects of conventional therapies like chemotherapy and radiation. Some of these side effects include hair loss, internal bleeding, and chronic nausea and in some cases, these therapies have resulted in fatalities. The therapy is known as talimogene laherprarepvec or simply T-VEC will be available on the market under the name “Imlygic”. It was developed and produced by the famous biotech company BiVex based in Massachusetts, USA. The specially designed and modified herpes virus is directly injected in the affected area and so far, it has been approved for the treatment of skin cancer. Truth to be told, scientists have been thinking about viruses as some sort of virus hunters that can help treat cancer for a long time. Compared to radiotherapy and chemotherapy, which act by killing cancer cells together with healthy cells in different body parts, these specially modified viruses target only tumor cells and the only side effects that the patient experiences is a mild fever that lasts for up to 2 days. As we said before, the impact of Imlygic on the body comes in two ways – the virus directly targets and attacks tumor cells and supports the immune system at the same time. According to Stephen Russell, a scientist that works in Mayo Clinic, this is a breakthrough in the pursuit of a cure for cancer. On the other hand, John Bell, a specialist in the field of viral cancer therapy in Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Canada says that it turns out that the injection of the virus in the body leads to some sort of waking up of the body and the body is able to identify the tumors even those that are not affected by the virus. Scientists still have to do research and see why this is happening. Both of the aforementioned scientists, point out the case of Stacy Erholtz. She was dealing with “incurable” myeloma (blood cancer) and this cancer was completely removed 36 hours after the therapy with modified measles virus. Of course, this is a single case and in order to come to a conclusion, scientists will have to conduct several clinical trials. Stephen Russell is an optimist and he believes that Imlygic will be the first phase in the process of complete change in the way medicine treats cancer. While it is true that the cure for cancer is still not available, this is a big step forward. References: Wikipedia | NCBI | FDA | AMGEN | ZaSe.mk