A Virus shows promising result in Cancer treatment

A virus that has been genetically engineered to home in on and destroy cancer cells has shown strong and lasting effects against tumors in patients when combined with standard chemotherapy, researchers reported yesterday.

Twenty-five out of 30 patients with head and neck cancer saw their tumors shrink after they were treated with Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s ONYX-015 along with chemotherapy, researchers reported. Eight tumors disappeared.

ONYX-015 is an adenovirus, a relative of common cold viruses, that has been genetically engineered to attack cells that lack normal p53, a gene that helps repair cancer-causing damage. This makes it technically a gene therapy drug, although unlike other gene therapy approaches, ONYX-015 does not repair or replace a faulty gene.

Last year ONYX-015 showed remarkable effects in head and neck cancer patients, but the effects did not last for long. So Fadlo Khuri and colleagues at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, working with teams in Britain, combined ONYX-015 with two common cancer chemotherapy drugs, 5-FU and Cisplatin. They reported their results in the journal Nature Medicine.