Scarlett
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Cancer News - 11/01/07 15:59
I for one am glad to see any strides in cancer research.
Cold virus could kill tumours Thursday January 11, 04:29 AM
A cancer charity has welcomed plans for trials of a radical way of fighting cancer, killing tumours by infecting them with viruses like the common cold.
If successful, the virus therapy could become a third pillar - alongside radiotherapy and chemotherapy in the standard battle against cancer, it was reported.
Professor of gene therapy at Oxford University Leonard Seymour, who has been working in London and the US, will lead the trials later this year.
He has been working with viruses
that kill cancer cells while avoiding harming healthy tissue.
Richard Sullivan, Cancer Research UK's director of clinical programmes said: "We are pleased to be supporting this new and important research.
"Whilst this approach is still at an early stage of development it has exciting potential, particularly for the treatment of cancer which has spread, a notoriously difficult stage of the disease to treat."
Prof Seymour told The Guardian newspaper that in principle the treatment could be "many times more effective than regular chemotherapy".
He added: "If you can get a virus into a tumour, viruses find them a very good place to be because there's no immune system to stop them replicating.
He told the newspaper that only a small amount of the virus needed to get to the cancer as "they replicate, you get a million copies in each cell and the cell bursts and they infect the tumour cells adjacent and repeat the process".
Preliminary research on mice has shown that the viruses work well on tumours which resist standard cancer drugs, the newspaper said.
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