Using a Deadly Virus to Kill Cancer: Scientists Experiment with New Treatment

(The Washington Post) – People facing one of medicine’s most dreaded diagnoses may someday have an unlikely source of hope: Injections that treat some types of brain cancer with part of a deadly tropical virus.

The virus, called Lassa, is the cause of a particularly nasty hemorrhagic fever endemic to West Africa. The research sounds terrifying, but a team from Yale and Harvard universities is using part of Lassa’s genetic code to make another virus safe enough to inject into the human brain, where it will hunt down and kill cancer cells.

Lassa’s partner in this search-and-destroy mission is vesicular stomatitis virus, or VSV. Most people who contract it never get sick, and those who do usually have only flulike symptoms. But if it infects the brain, VSV becomes deadly. Ironically, it’s the more fearsome Lassa that makes the usually innocuous VSV safe for use in that delicate organ.

Some viruses, including VSV, are good at attacking cancer cells without infecting healthy cells nearby. Many types of cancer cells are vulnerable to certain viruses, including VSV, because they can’t produce interferon, a protein that normal cells use to fight off infection. Some researchers see these viruses as the solution to one of their biggest challenges: killing the cancer without harming the patient.

Researchers have tested VSV against several kinds of cancer in lab experiments, and it’s usually effective without damaging healthy cells. A Mayo Clinic team started a clinical trial in 2012 to test VSV against liver cancer; it’s still underway. “We’ve been working with VSV for a number of years, and VSV has always been a really good virus for infecting cancer cells,” said Anthony Van den Pol, a Yale neurosurgery professor whose team has tested VSV against cancer in lab animals, as well as in cultures of human cells. “But the problem has always been that if VSV gets into the brain, it can cause neurological problems or even death.”

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