A herpes virus that kills skin cancer may soon be approved for treatments – after, in a study, has reduced tumors to one third of people with advanced melanoma.
After many decades of efforts and numerous rehearsals in humans, still only a virus designed to kill cancers was approved by the US and European regulatory entities. In 2015, the T-vec It was approved for the treatment of inoperable melanoma.
Now, a second – a virus to herpes – may receive green light at the end of the month, after gaining good results in the treatment of melanoma, a particularly severe type of skin cancer.
In a study in June in OncLivea genetically modified herpes virus, called RP1was injected into the tumors of 140 people with advanced melanoma for which standard treatments had failed.
Participants also took a medicine called Nolution, which is intended to reinforce the immune response to tumors.
RP1 is a Herpes Simplex virus, such as the T-VEC.
In 30% of people treated, tumors shrunk, including those that were not injected. In 50% of these cases, the tumors disappeared completely.
“Half of the people who responded had complete answers, that is, the total disappearance of all tumors,” he praised Gino Kim Inresearch leader, from the University of Southern California, to.
As it reveals to the same magazine, a rehearsal is now under more advanced phase that will involve 400 people.
However, the RP1 may be approved by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US for the treatment of advanced melanoma in combination with Nolution long before the completion of this essay.
“FDA should give us a decision later this month,” says Kim In.
Viruses that treat cancers
It has been known for over a century that viral infections can sometimes help treat cancers, but deliberately infect people with “wild” viruses is very risky.
In the 1990s, biologists began to genetically modify viruses to try to make them better in the treatment of cancer but unable to damage healthy cells.
As New Scientist explains these viruses are designed to function in two ways:
- first, directly infecting cancer cells and killing them Ao Rebentá-Las.
- second, triggering an immune response aimed at all cancer cellswherever they are in the body.
For example, a Herpes Simplex virus known as T-VEC, or Imlygic, has been modified to cause infected tumor cells to free an immunostimulant factor called GM-CSF, among other changes. It was approved in 2015 in the US and Europe for the treatment of inoperable melanoma.
However, T-VEC is not widely used. In part because it was only tested and approved to be injected into tumors in the skin. Most people with advanced melanoma have deeper tumors.
Now, with RP1, it was decided to try to inject it into deeper tumors.
RP1 has been improved in many ways. In particular, it causes tumor cells to be founded with neighboring cells, helping the virus spread through tumors and reinforcing the immune response.
Kim in expects RP1 to be much more used than T-VEC if approved.
