Cancer-killing virus: the harbinger of victory in the fight against the disease?

Image: Imugene

Cancer has been a scourge humanity has suffered from for as long as it has existed. And our evolutionary ancestors suffered from it too, as do many other species - from mammals to fish and beyond. So naturally as soon as medicine emerged as a field of human activity so did oncology - the study of cancer and how it is to be medically treated.

The first episodes of documented treatment of breast cancer goes back to Ancient Egypt at about the 1500 BC mark. That treatment was not viewed as a cure, merely as a palliative measure and consisted of burning and draining cancer-stricken breasts. While quite brutal, the treatment may have prolonged patients' lives - and in the age when the average life expectancy was below 30 years any improvement in survival chances was at a premium.

In the latter centuries cancer treatments mostly centered around surgically removing tumors and hoping for the best. In the 19th century, cancer fighting effects or radiation and certain toxins were discovered, giving birth to radiation and chemotherapy treatments. All of those treatments, however, were of a primitive, "slash and burn", variety.

The underlying reason behind the primitive nature of cancer treatments of yesteryear was, to a large degree, a very deficient understanding of what cancer was. As late as 1926 a Nobel Prize was awarded to a researcher who believed that certain types of stomach cancer were just a collection of parasites. Modern understanding of cancer, as that consisting of mutated cells having emerged as a failure of patient's immune system.

Once that understanding was achieved, various other hypothesis entered the research stage. Vaccines to prevent, or even reverse, cancer became a viable research area. These vaccines are varied - some work on boosting and fine tuning the immune system, others are virus-based and are intended to target cancer cells directly.

Of those, CF33, designed by Imugene, is the latest, and possibly most successful one. It is universal, its action mechanism is relatively simple and seemingly effective against all cancer cells. It is still to go through the very rigorous trial and verification process technologies of this sort are subjected to before entering mainstay medicine. But the promise it carries is tremendous.

Cancer is just a different sort of cells, on a fundamental level. Thus it makes most sense to address it on the cellular level too. We are now experimenting with this idea - and thus far the experiment is a tentative success. Hopefully, this will translate into a new paradigm where type of cancer that used to be an effective death sentence turns into an easily treatable condition with minimal residual pain and suffering.

Sources

Aussie Company Creates Virus That Can Kill Every Type Of Cancer
Stewart Perrie, Lad Bible, 8 November 2019

Oncolytic Virus
Imugene

Killing Cancer with Viruses? By Professor Yuman Fong, Inventor of Oncolytic Virus CF33 (video)
Imugene Youtube channel, 22 July 2019

Novel oncolytic chimeric orthopoxvirus causes regression of pancreatic cancer xenografts and exhibits abscopal effect at a single low dose
Michael P. O’Leary, Audrey H. Choi, Sang-In Kim, et al., Journal of Translational Medicine, 26 April 2018

History of cancer (wiki)

A Cancer 'Vaccine' Cured 97% of Tumors in Mice. What's That Mean for People?
Rachael Rettner, LiveScience, 29 March 2018

How to stop brain cancer—with rabies
Matt Blois, ScienceMag.org, 10 February 2017

Earliest known breast cancer identified in ancient Egyptian skeleton
Mark Miller, AncientOrigins, 20 March 2015

How Cancer Was First Discovered and Treated
Lisa Fayed, VerywellHealth, 29 August 2019

Disproved Discoveries That Won Nobel Prizes
Rosa Pomeroy, RealClearScience, 6 December 2015