FDA approves first virus will kill cancer cells.

[littlewolf]

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/fda-approves-first-virus-will-kill-cancer-cells/

BY THE NUMBERS, the newest FDA-approved treatment for skin cancer doesn’t seem a real game changer. A $65,000 course of treatment extends melanoma patients’ lives by less than four and a half months, on average—and that result is barely statistically significant.

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It’s how the new drug—Imlygic, made by the biotechnology company Amgen—works that has the oncology world so worked up. Imlygic is a virus—alive and infectious, the first to get a stamp of approval in the US for its ability to attack cancer cells. It opens a whole new front in the fight against cancer, which has the sneaky habit of coming back after chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery. “It is a totally new class of weapons that we can now use,” says Antonio Chiocca, a neurosurgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. And the armory could be bigger, because coming up right behind Imlygic are over a dozen clinical trials for more anti-cancer viruses.

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Imlygic itself is a reengineered version of the herpesvirus—the one that causes cold sores. To administer the drug, oncologists inject a massive dose—millions of viruses—directly into the skin tumor. Herpesvirus also prefers to infect cancer cells, busting them into bits. “The immune system sees all the debris,” says Chiocca. “This makes the immune system wake up and say, ‘Hey, there’s something going on here. Let’s check it out.’” So it’s a two-fer: Notionally, Imlygic attacks the tumor directly, and helps stimulate the patient’s own immune system into joining the fight.

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What the data do show, though, is that Imlygic isn’t that great a drug by itself. In trials it extended survival time by 4.4 months and shrunk tumors for at least six months in 16 percent of patients. That’s not terribly effective (though its side effects—flu-like symptoms—are downright mild compared to most chemotherapy). It does show promise in combination with other drugs called checkpoint inhibitors, which inhibit the molecules that inhibit—so basically, stimulate—the immune system. One small trial of 19 patients with Imlygic and a checkpoint inhibitor called Yervoy found a response for half of the patients. “I think these combination approaches are where the real action is going to happen the future,” Bell says.


alot more at the link.

cancer sucks.