March 9, 2010 - A virus that destroys cancer cells but leaves normal cells
unharmed works against prostate cancer, a human study shows.
The virus also blasts lymphoid, colon, ovarian, breast, pancreatic, brain,
lung, head and neck, and other cancer cells.
The virus is called reovirus, and nearly everyone has been infected with it.
But almost nobody notices, because at worst, the virus causes mild flu-like
symptoms. But when it infects cancer cells, reovirus is a tiger.
For nearly a decade, researchers have been looking for ways to exploit
reovirus as a nontoxic cancer treatment. Now a new study takes that search one
step closer to reality.
Six prostate cancer patients at Canada's Tom Baker Cancer Center had the
virus injected directly into their prostate tumors by Don G. Morris, MD, PhD,
and colleagues. The patients then had their prostate glands removed by
previously scheduled surgery.
"The beauty of the prostate study is that we gave one injection, and by
three weeks later we had the entire prostate gland to look at. So we could
inject the virus into a nest of tumor cells and see what it did," Morris tells
What it did was trigger the cancer cells' self-destruct program. All around
the injection site, the reovirus -- a product from Oncolytics Biotech Inc.
called Reolysin -- made cancer cells go away. Normal cells were not harmed.
The downside was that the virus did not spread throughout the prostate.
Cancer cells not in the immediate area of the injection were spared.
"I don't think it is a dead end. What these studies have done is give us
enough ammunition to go to regulators and say, 'Here is data that prostate
cancer is an attractive target for reovirus,'" Morris says. "And we have a lot
of safety data showing it is safe to give intravenously."
Putting reovirus into the bloodstream would allow it to reach cancers
throughout the body, not just at the site of injection. But there's a big
hurdle to overcome: After the first injection, the body mounts immune responses
that eliminate the virus.
One way of overcoming this problem is by using reovirus together with
chemotherapy. Chemo kills cancer cells, but also dampens antiviral immune
responses. A recent human study shows this strategy can benefit patients with
advanced head and neck cancer.
Another way to overcome the problem is to harness anti-reovirus immune
responses to attack cancer cells.
"The virus only sticks to tumor cells, so it sort of directs the immune
response to the tumor area," Morris says. "We have actually taken reovirus and
injected it in combination with tumor antigens, so the immune system kills
tumors pasted with the virus."
There's still a lot of work to do before reovirus in general, or Reolysin in
particular, becomes an approved cancer treatment, says cancer expert Rameen
Beroukhim, MD, PhD. Beroukhim was not involved in the Morris study.