This is the story of a 39-year-old Englishman who was told he was doomed. He had cancer of the salivary glands and no treatment was working anymore. Until he was offered to participate in a test at the Institute for Cancer Research in the British capital… The latter consisted of injecting the herpes virus into his tumor, reports the Daily Mail. Two years later, the man is still alive.
The clinical trial of this viral therapy is at the very beginning. Only 39 patients affected by skin cancer, esophagus and head and neck, have benefited. Some of them received injections of the genetically modified virus, the other received a combination of the virus and a drug, nivolumab.
Very interesting results
The miraculous Englishman got the first version, and was injected with the virus directly into his tumor every two weeks, for five weeks. The objective of this type of attack is to “colonize” the tumor with the virus, and make it “explode”. The expected result: that the immune system wakes up and fights against the disease.
In the group treated with the modified virus alone, three of nine subjects saw a reduction in tumors. For those who received the virus combined with the drug (30 people) 7 had beneficial effects. If this may not seem like much, the scientists point out that at this stage of the research, it is colossal.
Source: Genetically-engineered herpes virus can beat cancer: Scientists find tumors in terminally ill patients are eradicated or shrunk by groundbreaking new therapy, Daily Mail, September 23, 2022.
