A Virus is Used to Kill Liver Cancer Cells
Researchers have developed a virus which is used to kill cancer cells in patients with advanced end stage cancers. The treatments which are experimental offer an alternative for patients who have exhausted other options and can’t take any more chemotherapy or radiation. The virus approach to killing cancer cells has the advantage of leaving normal cells alone and not producing the toxic reactions that are seen with regular chemotherapy which indiscriminately kills both healthy and cancerous cells.
The anticancer virus has been given a code name of JX-594. JX-594 works specifically on cancerous cells by invading them and making copies of itself as well as destroying the cancer cell and the new copies of the virus then go on to attack other cancer cells.
50% of JX-594-treated patients survived for more than 9 months, which was significantly beyond their life expectancies of 3 to 4 months, and 4 patients with good responses survived for 11 to over 18 months. The responses for liver and lung cancer patients look the best. Treatment with JX-594 was shown to be well-tolerated with few side effects. A Phase II clinical trial is now underway for JX-594 in advanced liver tumors.
ref: http://www.jennerex.com/
and http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-21-2008/0004818305&EDATE=
