New cancer therapy ‘disguises' tumors as pork to trigger immune attack, 90% effective
According to Columbia University's Department of Surgery, 10-20% of patients who undergo transplant surgery will experience at least one rejection. However, researchers in China ingeniously turned that negative into a positive by directing that powerful impulse to attack cancer cells.
Called a 'tumor-to-pork' strategy, a new study published in Cell earlier this year demonstrated immense success in engineering a virus that tricked the human body into believing that cancer cells were pig tissue, according to the South China Morning Post, thereby triggering a hyperacute inflammatory response. The virus began attacking the tumor with a staggering 90% success rate, to the point of curing a patient with advanced cervical cancer.
A new and completely genius pathway opened up in the world's pursuit of a cure for cancer. Researchers noted, however, that further investigations are necessary as cancers are notoriously clever diseases. Nevertheless, one mechanism could be manipulated to attack a disease with the same fervor as a totally foreign agent, such as pig genes.
Professor Zhao Yongxiang, director of the State Key Laboratory of Targeting Oncology at Guangxi Medical University, led the inspiring study.
In an act of brilliant trickery, he investigated the immune response to transplant failure and engineered a virus that would, hopefully, provoke the body to kill cancer cells.
Taking a relatively benign virus, Newcastle disease virus (NDV), which causes little harm to humans, he and his team injected a pig gene to create a mutated new NDV-GT virus, as per South China Morning Post.
Infecting cancerous cells with this virus, the pig gene effectively alerted the body to a foreign entity that inspires total rejection, so they pulverized the cancer cell by disguising it.
Cancer might be clever, but Zhao strategized a special cloak that made the human body respond differently and more aggressively.
First, they conducted a series of animal studies, including monkeys. The results allowed them to move to human trials. Miraculously, even if further work should be conducted on the new approach, the human patients made incredible strides in healing.
They onboarded 23 patients with various untreatable cancers (liver, ovarian, cervical, lung, etc.) and administered weekly intravenous and intraperitoneal infusions for eight to 12 weeks, as per the study in Cell.
South China Morning Post continued that the patients experienced a range of stunning results: partial remission, clinically viable cure, and halted tumor growth.
Statistically, the clinical trials showed a 90% success rate with few negative effects.
As Zhao concluded, the clinical trials are entering phases 2 and 3, which would move the treatment into the later stages of testing that aim to evaluate its potential and safety profile.
We could be at the threshold of actually being able to defeat cancer, and it was born from an idea to direct a powerful response toward an unbeatable enemy.
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