A Viral Attack against Brain Tumors rabies-related virus seeks out and destroys tumors in the brain.

[Demeter]

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/20363/

This year, more than 21,000 people will be diagnosed with some form of brain cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute. While benign forms are relatively easy to treat, malignant tumors require a combination of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Even then, tumor cells may remain deeply lodged, replicating and spreading quickly through healthy brain tissue.

Now researchers at Yale University have found that a virus that's in the same family as rabies effectively kills an aggressive form of human brain cancer in mice. Using time-lapse laser imaging, the team watched vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) rapidly home in on brain tumors, selectively killing cancerous cells in its path, while leaving healthy tissue intact. What's more, Anthony Van den Pol, lead researcher and professor of neurosurgery and neurobiology at Yale, says that VSV is able to self-replicate and produce secondary lines of defense.

"A metastasizing tumor is fairly mobile, and a surgeon's knife can't get out all of the cells," says Van den Pol. "A virus might be able to do that, because as a virus kills a tumor cell, it could also replicate, and you could end up with a therapy that's self-amplifying."

In the past few years, scientists have looked to viruses as potential allies in fighting cancer. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic are engineering the measles virus to combat multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow. And while various groups have seen limited results after injecting herpes and polio-related viruses directly into brain tumors in mice, Van den Pol wanted to find a more effective cancer-killing strain.

[bitchkitty]

1. Very good news.

My brother died of brain cancer at age 3.

Still, I can't help thinking of the excellent movie I watched recently, "I am Legend".

[xchrom]

2. very cool. nt