Virus Infection Battles Brain Cancer
March 10, 2008 -- Curing a disease by causing another one seems counter-intuitive, but that's just what scientists at Yale University have done.
Specifically, they have modified a virus and injected it into mice with several kinds of inoperable brain cancer. Three days later, the tumors were gone.
The research, which builds on previous attempts to use viruses to treat cancer, could eventually treat otherwise fatal brain tumors in people, as well as other forms of cancer. While a human treatment is still years away and subject to federal approval, a tumor-killing virus could be a last-resort try at saving lives.
"The brain cancers we look at are very nasty," said Anthony Van den Pol, a scientist at Yale University and a study author. "This virus is pretty good at killing all of the tumor cells."
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