As part of a study, 100 cancer patients in the USA and Australia are injected with the cancer-killing virus “Vaxinia”. It’s supposed to shrink the cancer.
Groundbreaking research by a team of US doctors might mean a breakthrough cure for cancer. Scientists have injected the first human patient with a new cancer-killing virus called Vaxinia. The drug has already proven successful in animal studies, leading scientists and medical professionals to have high hopes for human results.
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The cancer is shrinking
So far, the oncolytic virus has been shown to shrink colon, lung, breast, ovarian and pancreatic cancer tumors in animal studies. The drug was developed by a joint team from the cancer research institutes “Imugene Limited” and “City of Hope”. The oncologist Dr. Daneng Li of City of Hope led the groundbreaking research. In a statement, he expressed his high hopes for the clinical trial: “Our previous research has shown that oncolytic viruses that immune system can encourage on Krebs to respond and kill it, and that they can stimulate the immune system to respond better to other immunotherapies, including checkpoint inhibitors,” said Dr. Li. Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that boosts the body’s natural defenses to fight it to fight the mutant cells. Dr. Li added, “Now is the time to further improve the effectiveness of immunotherapy, and we believe that [Vaxinia] has the potential for our results patients in their fight once morest cancer.”
Immuncheckpoints are important checkpoints of the immune system. Checkpoint inhibitors are considered a comparatively new approach in oncological therapy. They can not only be counted among the so-called targeted drugs, but also belong to the immunotherapeutic methods. As antibodies, they do not act directly once morest cancer cells. Rather, they intervene in the control of the immune response once morest tumors, at the so-called immune checkpoints: These are several important switching points in the immune system at which cellular proteins ensure that an ongoing immune reaction is also ended once more. This control of the immune reaction is particularly important in order to prevent an autoimmune reaction in which T-lymphocytes would attack the patient’s own tissue in the long term.
However, this targeted “brake” on the immune reaction once morest one’s own body also benefits some cancer cells. Since they still have many characteristics of their original tissue, they can switch off typical checkpoints and thus the T cells that are actually directed once morest them.
They are not “silver bullets”: the effect usually only sets in following a few weeks, and not everyone affected responds to immune checkpoint inhibitors. So far it is unclear which patients respond to therapy and why the treatment fails in others.
Healthy tissue is preserved
The genetically engineered virus is designed to infect, multiply and kill cancer cells while sparing healthy cells. Immune checkpoint inhibitors have been shown to be effective in certain types of cancer, but patients often relapse or become unresponsive to treatment. The main developer of the genetically modified virus at “City of Hope”, Dr. Yuman Fong explained that the failures of other common cancer therapies are what makes Vaxinia so effective. “Interestingly, it is the same properties that ultimately make cancer cells resistant to chemotherapy or radiation that account for the success of oncolytic viruses like [Vaxinia] “We hope to capitalize on the promise of virology and immunotherapy to treat a variety of deadly cancers.”
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Study until 2025
The study will enroll 100 patients at approximately 10 study centers in the United States and Australia. To be eligible for the study, cancer patients in the US and Australia must have metastatic or advanced solid tumors and have tried at least two other types of treatments to kill the cancer cells. Treatment is given to patients either as an injection or intravenously. Clinical trials are expected to be completed by early 2025.
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