Italian researchers have created a genetically modified virus they say holds out hope of more effective treatment for the most aggressive forms of breast cancer.
A team working under Bologna University virologist Gabriella Campadelli-Fiume have modified a herpes virus so that it attacks cancer cells while ignoring healthy cells.
In doing so, they say they have been able to leave the virus's potency intact.
Viruses have hitherto been under-used as frontline cancer treatments because the need to reduce their virulence has resulted in poor results.
''When a virus is genetically tweaked in order to use it as a weapon against tumours, it is usually weakened to make it harmless for the organism in which it is administered,'' Campadelli-Fiume told the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a top US journal.
''We took a different approach''. We left its virulence unchanged and took out the molecular keys the virus usually uses to enter healthy cells''.
In their place, the researchers have given the virus new keys to attack the HER-2 protein that causes higher aggressiveness in breast cancers, she said.
Bologna University has already issued a patent application for the new virus, which has shown promising results in mice with breast or ovarian cancer.
Some 60% of the mice were completely cured while the remaining 40% saw the cancer growth ''significantly inhibited,'' Campadelli-Fiume said.
Some 15-20% of breast cancers are worsened by HER-2. The protein is also involved in the acceleration of cancer of the ovaries and stomach.
The Bologna researchers believe the modified virus may also be effective against the cerebral metastasis of such tumours, which have proven inaccessible even to the most innovative drugs.
