<<But do we know anything about how ONCY are planning to make their virus survive while in circulation?>>>
They plan to use live reovirus suspended in saline according to a scientist on the ONCY yahoo board...
Although my most speculative holdings...it's small size, and interims on glioblastoma is what attracted me and kept me in ONCY...in their first glio study of 12 patients that were heavily pretreated, recurrent with avg. 3mo. survival...as of October 2003 they had 3 patients still alive at 13, 14 and 15 months...mind staggering...my husband died of glio...
There are 2 scientists over at ONCY yahoo board who have comprehensive knowledge...one is a virologist, the other a cancer researcher who's done work with the NCI...biotexan and matdu1 are their aliases...biotexan has a public email address and welcomes questions...he has absolutely no ties with ONCY...
When asked about immunogenicity with systemic administration...that because reovirus is a double stranded RNA virus, it will never enter the nucleus of a cell, it is shaped so that it can only enter cells with a Ras activated pathway, leaving it unable to enter normal cells...that the IV infusion will most likely(hopefully) overwhelm/kill the cancer cells and be excreted before a full immune response can be generated...which takes about 3-7 days...for the highly sensitive patient..this recently announced P1 study will be looking at this closely and a pulse of immunosuppressant could be used...I'm sure the epi, benadryl and crash cart will be at arm's length when these patients get their Reolysin!...the primate studies reduce my concern...
If one wants more information about the science...besides the website...I recommend the Yahoo board posts by biotexan, matdu1...some good ones are #5920-5922, 6312, 7463, 7464 and 9949...and here's a paper about Dr. Lee who made this discovery...like Folkman...serendipitously....
Certainly not an investment for everyone Peter...but because of my personal experience with glio...I'm quite drawn to it since biopharma has not come out with anything substantive for this population in 30 years with the exception of temozolomide which delays recurrence by a 2-4 months...
cogsci.uwaterloo.ca
Regards,
Zeta |
