A Japanese researcher who developed a drug that uses a virus to attack brain tumor cells says it could be applied to many other types of cancer.
Professor Todo Tomoki at the University of Tokyo Institute of Medical Science spoke about his virus therapy in an online news conference on Thursday.
The drug uses a herpes virus that is genetically engineered to replicate only in cancer cells and destroy them.
Japan's health ministry last month decided to approve the drug for a limited term, acknowledging its effectiveness on malignant brain tumors called gliomas.
Todo says the one-year survival rate of patients with recurring seriously malignant brain tumors after receiving standard therapy such as surgery is reportedly around 15 percent.
But he says the rate for patients given the virus drug in a clinical trial was 92.3 percent.
The drug would be the first of its kind to be approved in Japan. The professor says he worked with the drug's maker and the government to open the way.
Todo says he wants to hold clinical trials for patients with various types of cancer to accumulate data.
work2FIREbeardMan on June 11st, 2021 at 13:35 UTC »
Giving cancer herpes. What an incredible flex by humanity.
Kurvo1ovac on June 11st, 2021 at 12:49 UTC »
I think these types of biopharmaceuticals will be the ones that will cure cancer eventually. Cancer drugs simply have too many side effects unless they're delivered right to the cancer cells, which brings us right back to using living vectors for delivery (or nanobots eventually).
My_Body_The_Mystery on June 11st, 2021 at 12:38 UTC »
I was watching a documentary on these types of cancer treatments. One guy was talking about this brutal fever and delirium and sickness he was experiencing for a few days then he got better then MRIs showed that his brain tumor had reduced 75% or something crazy like that. He was a terminal patient with no hope and now somehow this bout of illness had bought him a bunch of time. It's science fiction-esque. I was thinking of this viral cancer treatment breaking out of the hospital and spreading through the population curing people who didn't even know they had a brain tumor.