This week, a medical team gave the first patient in a small clinical trial an experimental cancer therapy. It’s an approach that harnesses a new kind of ally: an oncolytic virus designed to specifically target cancer cells, while simultaneously increasing the immune response to cancer.
The recipients of this new protocol will be patients with advanced solid tumors.
A virus that kills cancer
And the virus CF33-hNIS, also called Vaxinia, was created by researchers at the City of Hope National Medical Center in California. It is now jointly developed with Imugene Limited.
Vaxinia is an oncolytic virus, that is, it affects and attacks cancer cells. For more than a century, researchers have hoped to use this type of virus to directly destroy cancer cells, but to no avail. Recently, however, some teams have taken a different approach: Modified appropriately, CF33-hNIS not only destroys cancer cells, but also causes them to “show up”, becoming more recognizable and vulnerable to our immune system.
The researchers believe this approach will also allow drugs that improve our immune response to cancer cells to be more successful, especially once morest hard-to-reach solid tumours.
Immunotherapy is a group of therapies that aim to improve the body’s immune response. In early animal and laboratory experiments the virus has reduced colon, lung, breast, ovarian and pancreatic cancers.
“It is time to improve immunotherapy even further and we believe that CF33-hNIS has the potential to help our patients in their fight once morest cancer,” from Daneng Lithe study’s principal investigator, an assistant professor in the Department of Medical Oncology and Therapeutic Research at City of Hope.
Oncolytic virus, the next steps
In this Phase I study, Vaxinia will be given to 100 patients with advanced or metastatic solid tumors who have already undergone at least two other therapies. Treatment groups will receive Vaxinia alone or in combination with pembrolizumab, an immunotherapeutic drug.
The phase I study is designed to assess the safety and optimal dosage of experimental therapy with the oncolytic virus. Researchers will check whether patients respond to Vaxinia, whether their tumors progress and their survival rate over the next few years – data that will support (or block) the next steps in clinical research.
The process is expected to be completed in early 2025.
