Research News
Fighting Cancer with Viruses
Parvoviruses can infest cancer cells and kill them, yet cause no disease in humans. At the end of October, a clinical phase I/IIa study commenced at the Neurosurgery Department of the University Hospital Heidelberg, that is the first to test the safety of a treatment with parvoviruses. The innovative treatment is developed for clinical application in cooperation with the Oryx GmbH & Co KG enterprise.
Prof. Dr Jean Rommelaere from the German Cancer Research Centre has been researching the cancer killing characteristics of parvoviruses since 1992. With only 20 nanometre in diameter, these viruses are amongst the smallest known viruses and they propagate exclusively in dividing cells. In humans, they do not cause any serious symptoms. Furthermore, they do not introduce their genetic material into the genome of infected cells, so that there is no risk of activating genes stimulating growth.
For his work, Rommelaere chose viruses of the H1 strain. To begin with, Rommelaere and his team investigated the basic principles of the cancer killing effect with regards to cell biology. Subsequently, they demonstrated, together with Dr Karsten Geletneky from the Neurosurgery Department of the University Hospital Heidelberg, that advanced glioblastoma in test animals completely degenerated after treatment with parvoviruses, and that the animals survived for a considerably longer period than animals in the untreated control group.
"We thus demonstrated that cancer treatment with parvoviruses can work. We absolutely wanted to continue from this point on, because we saw the great chance of our virus therapy helping also people affected by glioblastoma, an extremely malignant brain tumour. Yet to be able to further develop the project to its clinical application we urgently needed a partner", says Jean Rommelaere. This was when the Oryx GmbH & Co KG entered into the project. Together with industry partners, Oryx coordinated the large-scale production and subsequent pharmacological and toxicological approval of the therapeutic viruses as well as the approval procedure with the Paul Ehrlich Institute. Ultimately, the approval was granted in summer this year. This is the first time in Europe, that brain tumours may be treated with viruses.
