Cancer treatment using COMMON COLD virus could give hope to patients with inoperable tumors
- The Phase I clinical trial was announced Friday at NYU Langone Health
- A combination of a cold-blooded virus with an immunotherapy drug was used
- Treatment reduced melanoma tumors in 47% of the 36 study participants
- Several studies have examined how oncolytic viruses can be used for cancer
A new study using one of the viruses responsible for the common cold has proved promising in treating 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 announced on Friday, adding to more research on oncolytic viruses.
The clinical trial used live coxsackievirus, one of many viruses that can cause a common cold, in combination with pembrolizumab, an immunotherapeutic drug known as pembro or Keytruda.
The researchers say the combination reduced melanoma tumors in nearly half (47%) of 36 men and women who received therapy every few weeks for at least two years.
The clinical trial used live coxsackievirus (above), one of many viruses that can cause a common cold, in combination with pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug.
“The results of our initial study are very promising and show that this injection of oncolytic virus, a modified coxsackievirus, when combined with existing immunotherapy is not only safe, but has the potential to work better against melanoma than immunotherapy alone,” he said. Dr. Janice Mehnert, the study’s lead investigator and a medical oncologist, in a statement.
Mehnert warned that additional testing, which is already underway, should prove successful before combined treatment can become a “standard of care” or initial therapy for patients with advanced melanoma, ie melanoma that has spread elsewhere. of the body.
She added that the next phase of clinical trials will involve patients with melanoma that has become widespread, as well as patients whose tumors, if shrunk by the combination of drugs, could be more easily removed by surgery.
Curiously, the study found that the patients least likely to respond to immunotherapy alone were the ones who responded best to the combination treatment.
For example, patients who responded best to combination therapy had fewer chemical receptors (PDL1) on the surfaces of cancer cells that are blocked by pembrolizumab than patients who did not respond as well.
The researchers say additional experiments are needed to determine how the living virus alters the molecular structure of the tissues that immediately surround the tumors.
A common cold virus could one day be used to treat cancer, research suggests (stock)
“Our goal is to determine if the virus transforms the tumor’s microenvironment from” friendly “to one that is” unfriendly, “making cancer cells more vulnerable to pembrolizumab,” said Mehnert.
Volunteers in the last study were mostly elderly, enrolling in 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 suffering from infections, later linked to bacteria or viruses that cause measles and herpes, often experience tumor contraction.
Recent technological advances in genetic engineering have allowed scientists to reorganize viruses to target specific molecules on the surface of cancer cells to infect them more easily.
A separate study conducted in the UK in 2019 found that the same coxsackievirus strain used in the Langone study (CVA21) destroys bladder cancer cells.
Most of the 15 patients in the previous study showed signs of “cell death” in their tumors after just one week of treatment.