Strain of common cold virus could treat cancer cells in bladder

Washington: A recent study discovered that a strain of the common cold virus may potentially target, infect and destroy cancer cells in patients with bladder cancer.
Researchers investigated the safety and tolerability of exposure to the oncolytic (‘cancer-killing’) virus coxsackievirus (CVA21), a naturally occurring strain of the common cold, in fifteen patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC).
NMIBC is found in the tissue of the inner surface of the bladder and is the tenth most common cancer in the UK with approximately 10,000 people each year diagnosed with the illness, reported the study published in the journal of Clinical Cancer Research.
Current treatments for this cancer are problematic. Transurethral resection, an invasive procedure that removes all visible lesions, has a high tumor recurrence rate ranging from 50 per cent to 70 per cent as well as a high tumor progression rate between 10 per cent and 20 per cent over a period of two to five years.
Another common course of treatment, immunotherapy with Bacille Calmette-Guerin, a live bacterium used to treat bladder cancer, has been found to have serious side effects in one third of NMIBC patients while one third do not respond to the treatment at all.
During this pioneering study fifteen NMIBC patients, one week prior to pre-scheduled surgery to remove their tumours received CVA21 via a catheter in the bladder. Examination of tissue samples post-surgery discovered that the virus was highly selective, targeting only cancerous cells in the organ and leaving all other cells intact.