A strain of the common cold virus has been found to potentially target, infect, and destroy cancer cells in patients with bladder cancer, a new study published online on July 4, 2019 in Clinical Cancer Research reports. No trace of the cancer was found in one patient following treatment with the virus. In the majority of the other 14 treated patients, evidence of cancer cell death was observed. The title of the article is “Viral Targeting of Non-Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer and Priming of Anti-Tumour Immunity Following Intravesical Coxsackievirus A21.” Researchers from the University of Surrey and Royal Surrey County Hospital investigated the safety and tolerability of exposure to the oncolytic (“cancer-killing”) virus coxsackievirus (CVA21), a naturally occurring strain of the common cold virus, in fifteen patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). NMIBC is found in the tissue of the inner surface of the bladder and is the tenth most common cancer in the UK with approximately 10,000 people each year diagnosed with the illness. Current treatments for this cancer are problematic. Transurethral resection, an invasive procedure that removes all visible lesions, has a high tumor recurrence rate ranging from 50 per cent to 70 per cent as well as a high tumor progression rate between 10 per cent and 20 per cent over a period of two to five years. Another common course of treatment, immunotherapy with Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG), a live bacterium used to treat bladder cancer, has been found to have serious side effects in one third of NMIBC patients, while one third do not respond to the treatment at all. During this pioneering study, fifteen NMIBC patients, one week prior to pre-scheduled surgery to remove their tumors, received CVA21 via a catheter in the bladder.
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