Specialised tumour-killing virus paves way for novel brain cancer treatment Researchers conducting a study on mice have discovered a specialised virus with the ability to reproduce its tumour-killing genes that selectively target and eradicate cancers in the brain, leaving healthy brain-tissue virtually untouched.
These finding has the boffins excited as it could lead to a novel treatment for brain cancer in humans. "Most importantly, this study finds that the virus can penetrate into the brain, where it even reaches cells that have migrated away from the main tumour. Assuming that the virus behaves similarly in humans, in the future, it may provide a novel and highly efficacious way to treat resistant tumours," said Harald Sontheimer, PhD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who was not affiliated with the study.
The study was led by senior author Anthony van den Pol, PhD, and his team at Yale University School of Medicine, who spent 6 years of basic research into the fundamental processes of viruses and the cells they target. The team planned to test the vesicular stomatis virus, which was selected for its ability to attack brain tumours and leave healthy tissue largely uninfected.
They implanted tumour cells from brain cancers commonly found both in people and in mice, into immune-compromised mice, which later received an injection of the virus in the tail.
Van den Pol's team examined the fluorescent proteins embedded in both tumour and virus cells in the brains of living mice, and watched as the virus infected multiple sites in the brain, spreading across an entire tumour in just 3 days, and destroyed tumour cells that came in its way.
However, it was found that the virus spared the normal mouse tissue or non-cancerous human brain cells transplanted into the mouse brain. The scientists will be conducting future research that will focus on understanding potential safety risks. "We have some ideas for making the virus safer in the human brain," said van den Pol.
