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Asked by tylanhollyrokmore to Gioia on 15 Jun 2010 in Categories: Your Research. This question was also asked by nigeorge, lamerica212.
Question: Have you got far in trying to use viruses as a weapon to kill cancer?, if so, has it had a good effect ?
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Gioia Cherubini answered on 15 Jun 2010:
So far I have tested the virus on a lot of pancreatic cells and it’s very good at killing them, especially when you give it together with a low dose of chemotherapy drug (a low dose would give also less side effects to patients). Some colleagues have also tested it in mice and the tumour has disappeared. So far the results are really good, but I don’t want to get too excited, because we need to test it in more animals and more cells, to be sure of these results. At the moment there is only one oncolytic virus that is licensed to the public, it’s called ONYX-015 and it’s used in China. But we still have a lot of work to do with oncolytic viruses
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Comments
tylanhollyrokmore commented on :
So if you test it on more cells, and the outcome is positive, do you think it could be the start of curing cancer?
Gioia commented on :
it would be the start of testing it on animals and if that is positive as well, then it will be the beginning of the very long process of clinical trial in humans. It’s a long way to get a new treatment to be approved, but if in the end this works out to be efficacious in humans as well, that would be my greatest achievement, even if it would take 20 years!
tylanhollyrokmore commented on :
Thats great!!
Gioia commented on :
yes it is! I just need to keep working hard…and keep my fingers crossed 😉
tylanhollyrokmore commented on :
Ill keep mine crossed aswell!:D