Dr. Yuman Fong, MD, surgical oncologist and chair of the Department of Surgery at City of Hope, talks about a new virus that potentially is “killing” cancer.
Interview conducted by Ivanhoe Broadcast News in 2022.
Can you talk about using a virus to kill cancer?
FONG: It’s quite amazing that we could retask a virus to kill cancer. The idea that we could actually design or find a virus that could kill cancer is not far-fetched. In nature, there are many viruses that only infect certain cell types. For example, hepatitis virus only infects the liver. Meningitis virus only infects the brain and spinal cord. So, we thought that we should be able to design or find a virus that only likes infecting cancer and leaves all the other cells alone. That’s what we think we’ve done.
Does it kill all types of cancers or just certain cancers?
FONG: Well, people over the decades have been trying to find viruses to kill certain types of cancers for a long time. What we decided was that rather than doing that, why don’t we just find viruses that kill any type of cancer? So the way we did it was we created a panel of brand new viruses, and then, we screened that against the NCI-60. That stands for the National Cancer Institute panel of 60 cancers that generally any new cancer therapies are screened against. We said we didn’t want to just find ones that killed skin cancer or liver cancer or lung cancer or colon cancer. Let’s find ones that killed all of them, and that’s what we did. We went ahead and found a bunch of them that did that. Then, we tested them for safety because what we want is something that not only is really good for killing cancer but is really safe in humans. So, we tested it in animals for safety, and we found a few that not only killed every cancer but were really safe in animals, and those are the ones we are taking to humans.
Is it safer because it’s more natural than chemotherapy or something that you’re making?
FONG: It is safer because this panel of viruses that we now have only like infecting, replicating and killing cancer cells for certain cellular reasons that cancer cells exist. And they are highly restricted to just cancer cells. So, in animals, we rarely get these viruses to infect and replicate in any other organ.
Does it kind of turn on the immune system to hyper?
FONG: Well, these viruses we have are working in three ways. These viruses do actually infect and kill cancer cells directly. But the second way they work is by infecting the cancer cells, it makes the cancer cells much more recognizable to the immune system. In our bodies, we actually have two types of immunity. One that’s mediated by antibodies, but the second type is really what we call cellular immunity. We have cells circulating in our body that are looking for invaders. They could be viruses. They could be bacteria. They could be cells that don’t belong in us. And what having our virus infecting cancer cells do is that it alerts the body to these cancer cells, both for the viral infection as well as characteristics in the cancer that make them different. Then, our own immune system starts attacking the cancer cells. The third way we have them working is that we ask these viruses sometimes to also label these cancer cells with certain proteins that don’t exist in humans. And in that way, we can also make the cells much more recognizable to immune cells that either are inside our cells already or that we can introduce to try to kill cancers. So in all three ways, we are taking it to humans and hoping we make an impact in cancer.
So, have you had more than one patient?
FONG: More. We actually have two different viruses that we have taken to humans in this paradigm. The first is a trial that we’re doing for triple negative breast cancer – that’s the worst breast cancer someone can have. These are ones that are not responsive to agents that target estrogen or progesterone, and most of the patients who get that cancer die. We are now using this virus to try to treat that and have treated multiple patients..
What about the other virus?
FONG: The other virus, we are using it to test in any solid tumor. Anybody with a bad cancer can enter that trial. And that second virus, we’ve also treated multiple patients.
So, what’s next?
FONG: Right now, we’re in safety trials with two different viruses. Next would be to partner with other agents that will stimulate the immune system. We are convinced that by having this virus, we will not only be able to directly attack the cancer and stimulate our immune system, but we will be able to partner with other agents that also do that and together grow therapies for cancers that until now have no treatment.
END OF INTERVIEW
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