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A strain of the common cold virus can cure bladder cancer, a recent study has suggested.
Scientists have discovered a virus that can infect and kill cancer cells, which can potentially revolutionize cancer treatment.
In a British trial with 15 bladder cancer patients, all participants were treated with coxsackievirus (CVA21) before surgery to remove their tumors.
The response was surprising: cancer cells in 14 patients were found to have been killed, and the disease disappeared in one patient. Furthermore, no one suffered any side effects before and after the treatment.
When tissue samples were analyzed after the surgery, researchers found that the CVA21 had targeted and eliminated the cancer cells in the bladder and also other cancerous cells, yet all healthy cells remained intact.
"The virus gets inside cancer cells and kills them by triggering an immune protein, and that leads to signaling of other immune cells to come and join the party," said Hardev Pandha, the study leader and professor at the University of Surrey and Royal Surrey County Hospital.
New cancer treatment
Non-muscle invasive bladder is the 10th most common cancer in the UK, with 10,000 new cases recorded each year.
Viruses like CVA21 "could signal a move away from more established treatments such as chemotherapy," said Nicola Annels, research fellow at the University of Surrey. Such new findings could raise the prospect of tackling the cancer using immunotherapy instead of chemotherapy in future treatment.
"If the safety, tolerability, and efficacy data can be confirmed in larger clinical studies and trials, then it could herald a new era in the treatment for non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer patients, like me, who often feel that innovations in cancer therapies pass us by," said Mark Linch, an expert on bladder cancer at the Cancer Research UK Cancer Institute at University College London.
The initial results were "encouraging," he added, "It will be really interesting to see how this new virus-based therapy fares in larger trials in people with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, particularly in combination with newer immunotherapies."
(CGTN)
