Cancer killing treatment with a GENERAL COLD virus can give patients with inoperable tumors hope
- Phase I clinical trial announced Friday at NYU Langone Health
- Use a combination of a live cold virus with an immunotherapy agent
- Treatment shrank melanoma tumors in 47% of the 36 participants in the trial
- Several studies have investigated the use of oncolytic viruses in cancer
A new study using one of the viruses responsible for colds has promised to treat advanced skin cancer that could not be treated with surgery.
The results of the Phase 1 study, led by a researcher at NYU Langone Health and its Perlmutter Cancer Center, were released Friday, which contributed to the increasing investigation into oncolytic viruses.
In the clinical trial, live coxsackievirus was used, one of the many viruses that can cause colds, in combination with pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug known as pembro or Keytruda.
The researchers say the combination of melanoma tumors has shrunk in nearly half (47 percent) of 36 men and women who received the therapy every few weeks for at least two years.
In the clinical trial, live coxsackievirus (above) was used, one of the many viruses that can cause colds, in combination with pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy agent.
“Our initial results of the study are very promising and show that this oncolytic virus injection, a modified coxsackie virus, in combination with existing immunotherapy is not only safe, but that it can also work better against melanoma than immunotherapy alone,” said Dr. Janice Mehnert, the study’s senior investigator and a medical oncologist, in a statement.
Mehnert warned that further testing, which is already underway, would have to be successful before the combination treatment could become a ‘standard of care’, or therapy for patients with advanced melanoma, meaning melanoma that has spread to other parts of the body.
She added that the next phase of clinical trials will involve patients with melanoma who have become widespread, as well as in patients whose tumors can be more easily removed by surgery if reduced by the drug combination.
Strikingly, the study found that patients who are least likely to respond to immunotherapy alone are those who respond best to the combined treatment.
For example, patients who respond best to the combined treatment have fewer chemical receptors (PDL1) on the surfaces of cancer cells blocked by pembrolizumab than patients who do not respond as well.
Researchers say further experiments are needed to determine how the living virus changes the molecular composition of the tissues that immediately change around tumors.
A cold virus could one day be used to treat cancer, according to research (stock)
“Our goal is to determine whether the virus changes the tumor environment from ‘friendly’ to ‘unfriendly’, making the cancer cells more vulnerable to pembrolizumab,” Mehnert said.
The volunteers in the most recent study were mostly seniors enrolled at three cancer clinics, including the Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the Gabrail Cancer Center in Canton, Ohio, and the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, California.
Scientists have known since the 1800s that some cancer patients who suffered from infections, which were later linked to bacteria or viruses that cause measles and herpes, often experience tumor shrinkage.
Recent technological advances in genetic engineering have enabled scientists to recharge viruses to target specific molecules on the surface of cancer cells to infect them more easily.
A separate study in the UK in 2019 found that the same type of coxsackie virus used in the Langone trial (CVA21) destroys bladder cancer cells.
The majority of the 15 previous study’s 15 patients showed signs of ‘cell death’ in their tumors after only one week of treatment.