Cancer-killing treatment with a COMMON COLD virus could give hope to patients with inoperable tumors
- Phase I clinical trial announced Friday was conducted at NYU Langone Health
- Uses a combination of a live cold virus with an immunotherapy drug
- Treatment reduced melanoma tumors in 47% of the 36 study participants
- Several studies have investigated how oncolytic viruses can be used in cancer
A new study of one of the viruses responsible for the common cold has shown promise in the treatment of advanced skin cancer that could not be treated with surgery.
The results of the phase 1 study, led by a researcher at NYU Langone Health and the Perlmutter Cancer Center, were released Friday, adding to the growing body of oncolytic virus studies.
The clinical trial used live coxsackievirus, one of several viruses that can cause the common cold, in combination with pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug known as pembro or Keytruda.
The researchers say the combination shrank melanoma tumors in nearly half (47 percent) of 36 men and women who received the therapy every few weeks for at least two years.
The clinical trial used live coxsackievirus (above), one of many viruses that can cause the common cold, in combination with pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug
“Our initial study results are promising and show that this oncolytic virus injection, a modified coxsackievirus, in combination with existing immunotherapy is not only safe, but has the potential to work better against melanoma than immunotherapy alone,” said Dr. Janice Mehnert, the the study’s senior investigator and a medical oncologist, in a statement.
Mehnert warned that further testing, already underway, would need to be successful before the combination treatment could become a ‘standard treatment’ or ‘go-to therapy’ for patients with advanced melanoma, meaning melanoma has spread to other parts from the body.
She added that the next phase of clinical trials will involve patients with widespread melanoma, as well as patients whose tumors, if shrunk by the combination of drugs, can be more easily removed by surgery.
Intriguingly, the study found that patients least likely to respond to immunotherapy alone were the ones who responded best to the combined treatment.
For example, patients who responded best to the combined treatment had fewer of the chemical receptors (PDL1) on the surfaces of cancer cells blocked by pembrolizumab than patients who did not respond as well.
Researchers say further experiments are needed to determine how the living virus changes the molecular makeup of the tissues surrounding tumors.
A cold virus could one day be used to treat cancer, study suggests (stock)
“Our goal is to determine whether the virus changes the tumor microenvironment from ‘friendly’ to ‘unfriendly’, making the cancer cells more vulnerable to pembrolizumab,” said Mehnert.
The volunteers in the latest study were mostly seniors, who enrolled at three cancer clinics, including Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Gabrail Cancer Center in Canton, Ohio, and John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, California.
Scientists have known since the 1800s that some cancer patients who suffered from infections, later attached to bacteria or viruses that cause measles and herpes, often experience tumor shrinkage.
Recent technological advances in genetic engineering have allowed scientists to re-engineer viruses to target specific molecules on the surface of cancer cells to more easily infect them.
A separate study in the UK in 2019 found that the same strain of coxsackievirus used in the Langone study (CVA21) destroys bladder cancer cells.
The majority of the 15 patients from the previous study showed signs of ‘cell death’ in their tumors after just one week of treatment.