Treating prostrate cancer with virus?

Canadian scientists are working on what they claim is a fascinating new way to treat prostate cancer using viruses, a research which may pave for effective therapies for the disease.

The new therapy, which seeks to identify cancer cells, to invade and destroy them, uses a reovirus, from a family of common viruses that cause mild, even undetectable, stomach and respiratory illnesses.

The virus has already shown potential to attack many types of cancer cells, including ovarian, and breast cancers.

For their research, the scientists, led by Don Morris, a medical oncologist in the Department of Oncology at the Tom Baker Cancer Center in Alberta, recruited six men for a Phase 1 trial. All the men had early stage prostate cancer.

The scientists took the reovirus and injected it into a suitable cancer nodule within each man's prostate. And three weeks later, they removed the men's prostates as part of the patient's standard treatment. They then analysed the tissue to see how well the reovirus worked.

They found that in that short time, the virus appeared to destroy a number of the cancer cells, while also sending out copies of itself to attack more cancer cells. And, to the relief of the scientists, the virus stayed confined to cancer cells and didn't spread into normal tissue.

What's more the treatment caused only modest side effects such as mild flu-like symptoms, the CTV News reported.

"For the treatment of localised prostate cancer, we found that the reovirus is safe and has evidence of specific tumour versus normal prostate cell efficacy," Morris said.

According to the scientists, the virus therapy would someday allow doctors to shrink tumours so that they can be more effectively treated by chemotherapy, and may reduce in the number of men who need prostate removal surgery.

"Our results are a stepping stone into future prostate cancer clinical trial with another category of cancer therapeutics. The success in first six patients' trial was everything we hoped for and perhaps more."

The findings have been published in the latest edition of the Cancer Research journal.