Anti-cancer virus

They want to turn the causative agent of cowpox into a remedy against cancer

Polina Gershberg, Naked Science

American oncologist Yuman Fong has announced the start of human trials of a new potential cancer treatment developed by the Australian biotech company Imugene. The remedy is not quite ordinary – an artificial virus created on the basis of the causative agent of cowpox.

How a common pathogen of viral infection and a genetically modified oncolytic virus work.

Experiments conducted on cell cultures and laboratory mice have shown promising results. At the beginning of next year, clinical trials of the CF33 virus will begin on patients with breast cancer, as well as a so-called basket study on patients with several types of cancer (when subjects are selected not by the characteristics of the tumor, but by the presence of certain mutations associated with cancer). In particular, the virus will be tested on patients with triple negative breast cancer – one of the most aggressive forms of cancer.

This is not the first attempt to create antitumor viruses. For example, a genetically modified version of the herpes virus called Imlygic has been tested and approved for the treatment of melanoma because it helps the body's immune system recognize and attack cancer cells. In the USA, the causative agent of ARVI is being tested as a potential drug against brain cancer. According to Yuman Fong, the first evidence that viruses can contribute to cancer remission was obtained more than 100 years ago: then people who received the rabies vaccine had a slowdown in growth and a decrease in tumors.

The main problem when creating "medicinal viruses" is to "adjust" their cytopathic effects so that viruses destroy cancer cells without becoming a threat to humans as a whole. That is why the causative agent of cowpox, harmless to humans, was chosen as the basis for a new antitumor agent.

The creators of the virus hope that CF33 will not only help destroy cancer cells, but also increase the efficiency of recognition of altered cells by lymphocytes. However, it is too early to talk about a breakthrough in the field of cancer treatment. Before that, the virus was tested only on model animals with weakened immunity. It is not yet known whether the virus will be able to adequately infect the patient's cancer cells or whether his immune system will kill CF33 sooner.

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