Tailor-made viruses for enhanced cancer therapy
August 2, 2012
Parvoviruses specifically kill cancer cells and are already in the clinical trial stage for treating malignant brain tumors. However, they can also infect normal cells — without doing any harm to them — so a large portion of viruses is lost during therapy.
Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have now modified parvoviruses in such a way that they initially lose their ability to infect cells. In a second step, they equipped the viruses with a molecular key for infecting cancer cells.
A number of parvoviruses are able to enter and destroy cancer cells, while they do not cause any disease symptoms in humans. Since 1992, scientists working with Professor Jean Rommelaere at DKFZ have been studying such viruses with the aim of using them for cancer therapy.
For their studies, the researchers chose H1 parvoviruses, which normally infect rodents but are also infectious for human cells. H1 viruses kill tumor cells on the basis of their natural properties, i.e., their genetic material does not need to be modified for them to do so. At Heidelberg University Hospital, a phase I/IIa clinical trial is already ongoing to test treatment of malignant brain tumors using H1 viruses./.../
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