Virus/Chemo Drugs Are Good Duo

Combining an anticancer, non-disease causing virus with chemotherapy drugs increases the effectiveness of both, say U.S. researchers.

Scientists at SAIC-Frederick, a contractor of the National Cancer Institute, combined Respiratory Enteric Orphan virus (reovirus) with cisplatin, gemcitabine, mitomycin, vinblastine, and paclitaxel and tested the combinations against six different chemotherapy-sensitive, non-small cell lung cancer cell lines.

The blended regimens worked better in all the cultures than either modality alone; especially reovirus and paclitaxel, which was extremely effective in all six lines, including those with high-level resistance to paclitaxel or reovirus.

The team said that about 85 percent of lung cancers are non-small cell type, and lung cancer kills more people worldwide than colon, breast, and prostate cancer together.

The researchers used a preparation of reovirus called Reolysin, made by Oncolytics Biotech, that replicates in and kills tumors with uncontrollable growth signals caused by activated Ras genetic pathways in the cell.

Reolysin is being used in phase 1/2 human clinical trials in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and has recently been approved for a phase 3 trial in the U.K. for advanced or metastatic cancers.

The preparation appears to be well tolerated and antitumor effects have been reported in all trials to date, the researchers said.

A report on the research was presented Monday today at the EORTC-NCI-AACR symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Prague, Czechoslovakia.