Cancer. The word itself conjures up nightmares.
The disease itself–or all the manifestations that fall under its ugly name–eats us from the outside and–more often–from the inside.
It’s not always malignant. But too often it is.
Despite what sometimes appear to be overwhelming odds, doctors and research scientists refuse to halt the battle to find a cure.
And unlike all those fanciful cures one reads about on the Internet, the scientific community is, well, scientific in its approach. No quacks need apply.
Now, a Canadian research team is taking another crack.
Last Friday, The Ottawa Hospital announced the launch of a world-first clinical trial of a Canadian viral therapy that will using two different viruses to directly attack cancer cells and stimulate an anti-cancer immune response.
The clinical trial will use modified versions of the Maraba virus–first isolated from Brazilian sandflies–in combination with the Adenovirus, derived from the common cold virus.
The Maraba virus has been genetically modified in Ottawa laboratories, It has the ability to sense the difference between tumour and non-tumour cells and then attack the cancer with the help of the body’s immune system.
The trials, funded by the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, will take place at hospitals in Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton and Vancouver.
Combining the viruses is something that Dr. John Bell of The Ottawa Hospital, Dr. David Stojkl of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, and Dr. Brian Lichty of McMaster University, have been studying for 15 years.
Dr. Bell spoke with RCI by phone from Ottawa.
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