With science progressing at an alarming speed, it may not be long before researchers develop effective treatments to combat cancer. On to road to one such therapy, scientists in Canada have apparently identified a new oncolytic viral therapy against prostate cancer with the utilization of a virus known as the reovirus.
The respiratory, enteric, orphan virus generally called reovirus is said to be a non-attenuated, environmental virus that has apparently displayed oncolytic potential against several kinds of cancer, particularly lymphoid, ovarian, breast, pancreatic and high grade glioma cancer. This seems to be the first time that the virus has apparently been examined against prostate cancer.
“The reovirus is a very common, ubiquitous virus that most people are exposed to. As far as we know, it doesn’t cause any significant illness in humans, even though when someone is exposed to it, it manifests, at most, as a mild respiratory infection or mild diarrhea. For the treatment of localized prostate cancer, we found that the reovirus is safe and has evidence of specific tumor vs. normal prostate cell efficacy,” commented, Don Morris, M.D., Ph.D., medical oncologist in the Department of Oncology at the Tom Baker Cancer Center in Alberta, Canada.
By means of preclinical and clinical settings, Morris and colleagues supposedly investigated the effectiveness of the reovirus as a tentative therapeutic for prostate cancer in vitro and in vivo. Among the 6 patients who took part in the research, all the participants seemed to be suffering from early-stage, organ-confined prostate cancer. Every patient supposedly experienced a single intralesional virus injection into an appropriate prostate cancer nodule by means of transrectal ultrasound guidance. After three weeks, Morris and colleagues apparently eliminated the prostate as part of the patient’s normal treatment for correlative science analysis.
The discoveries appeared to exhibit security and effectiveness with minimal toxicity and no viral replication in the usual portions of the prostate, as per Morris. Cancer cell death seemed to be obvious in the prostate. Numerous researches have apparently proposed that the virus’ side effects are believed to be comparatively modest, comprising of mild, self-limiting, flu-like symptoms.
Robert Clarke, Ph.D., D.Sc., professor of oncology at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University and an editorial board member of Cancer Research, is of the opinion that this research could deserve succeeding clinical trials of the reovirus as a likely technique of treating a few prostate cancers.
The research was published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.