Onyx has reported significant results with the injected tumors. It hasn't translated into patient benefit.
The photo shows a subcutaneous tumor. It could readily be excised. They wouldn't do something complex if the patient could be cured by a simple excision.
It's the metastases that ultimately kill such patients. In the case of Onyx, the adeno had no effect at distant tumors.
You cure the (in this case) primary, but lose the patient.
Simply ask yourself "why would they inject a cancer with an oncolytic virus, when it could simply be excised?" The answer is that, given metastases, the patient becomes a valuable asset to a clinical trial. They tell the patient, correctly, that they have an incurable cancer. They represent local injection of the cancer as a potential cure, and the patient therefore agrees to let the physicians inject the primary. The primary is reduced in size, and the company has a dramatic photo to show.
I'm not saying that it won't work. I don't think that it will (viruses are immunogenic), but I'd love to be wrong.
When I was a grad student at UCLA, Don Morton was famous for making melanomas go poof, by injecting them with BCG. But melanomas that haven't metastasized are a cinch to **cure** by surgical excision. You could do your own.
(I did that once..... I removed one of my own basal cell carcinomas with a set of nail scissors. It hurt. Not recommended.)
The concept of using viruses is a new wrinkle, but the observation that tumors -- accessible to injection -- could be reduced in size or even eliminated by mucking with them is an old one. I was a fellow of Cancer Research Institute.......
cancerresearch.org
An incredible woman.
They say that "In addition, evidence of remote tumour response was also noted in several patients, suggesting a potential role in the treatment of metastases." I can only say that Onyx made similar observations. Let's hope that it works with reo. |
