Tame virus could prove prostate cancer weapon

247PM GMT 09 March 2010

Scientists who administered the pathogen to 6 proffer patients found it killed off cancer cells whilst provident normal tissue.

The respiratory, enteric, waif virus, or ""reovirus"" is drawn out but causes no poignant seizure in humans.

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People unprotected to it suffer, at most, amiable flu-like respiratory symptoms or diarrhoea.

Previous investigate has shown that reovirus has ""oncolytic"" potential, definition it preferentially targets cancer cells.

There is already a little justification of the outcome opposite lymphoid, ovarian, breast, pancreatic and high class glioma brain cancers.

The new Canadian investigate is the initial to exam the pathogen on prostate cancer.

Study personality Dr Don Morris, from the Tom Baker Cancer Center in Alberta, pronounced ""Our formula are a stepping mill in to destiny prostate cancer clinical trials with an additional difficulty of cancer therapeutics.""

The researchers recruited 6 men with early-stage prostate cancer that had not nonetheless proposed to spread.

Each was since a singular injection of the pathogen in to their tumour, guided by ultrasound.

Three weeks after the patients had their prostate glands private as piece of their normal treatment.

Analysis of the prostate tissue showed the genocide of cancer cells in the treated with colour tumours. However there was no pointer of the pathogen replicating in non-cancerous areas of the prostate.

""For the diagnosis of localised prostate cancer, we found that the reovirus is protected and has justification of specific swelling contra normal prostate cell efficacy,"" pronounced Dr Morris.

The commentary were reported in the biography Cancer Research.

Professor Robert Clarke, a part of of the journal"s paper board, pronounced ""People have well known of this focus of the reovirus in trials, but nobody to my believe has conducted trials in prostate cancer.

""I think this is an engaging approach. There is not a lot finished in oncolytics, but obviously it is an area that is removing augmenting attention, and we need all we can get the hands on to have a disproportion in these patients.""

Each year around 35,000 men in the UK are diagnosed with prostate cancer and 10,000 die from the disease.