杏吧原创

ONE of the viruses responsible for common colds might be capable of destroying the deadly skin tumours known as melanomas.

A team led by Darren Shafren of the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia, has shown that a type of Coxsackie virus kills melanoma cells but leaves normal cells untouched. The virus targets the tumours because the surfaces of the melanoma cells have large numbers of the proteins the virus uses to get into cells. When the virus was injected into mice with human melanomas, the tumours disappeared within a month, the team reports in the January issue of Clinical Cancer Research.

Shafren鈥檚 team is now gearing up for a safety trial in patients with terminal malignant melanoma. The method will not work for people who are immune to the Coxsackie virus strain, which preliminary tests suggest make up about 15 per cent of the population. But such people could be treated with another cancer-killing strain the team identified.

Few natural viruses target tumours. Other groups hoping to treat cancer this way are creating genetically modified strains.