Cancer: Virus fuels immune system to attack brain tumors

https://goo.gl/1bzgYn

Researchers at the University of Leeds and the Institute of Cancer Research in London, both in the United Kingdom, found that the naturally occurring virus was able to cross the blood-brain barrier in all who took part in the study.

These findings are significant because it was previously thought that the only way to use the virus to treat brain cancer was to inject it directly into brain tissue. But this approach is limited; it cannot be repeated very often and does not suit all patients.

Reporting in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the researchers explain how the virus — a member of the reovirus family — not only infected cancer cells without affecting healthy cells, but it also helped the immune system to find and attack the cancer cells.

They believe that their study shows how reoviruses might enhance a type of immunotherapy called checkpoint therapy for cancers that start in the brain or spread to the brain from another part of the body.

"This is the first time it has been shown," explains co-lead study author Dr. Adel Samson, who is a medical oncologist at the University of Leeds, "that a therapeutic virus is able to pass through the brain-blood barrier, and that opens up the possibility [that] this type of immunotherapy could be used to treat more people with aggressive brain cancers."