ONYX NEWS IN TODAY'S SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (PAGE 1)
Published Tuesday, May 19, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News
Reworked cold virus becomes weapon in war on tumor cells
BY LISA M. KRIEGER
Mercury News Staff Writer
An anti-cancer strategy that directs a common cold virus to seek and destroy
tumor cells has paid off impressively, eradicating or significantly shrinking the
tumor in nine out of 10 terminal patients.
The approach, designed by Onyx Pharmaceuticals of Richmond, is the latest of
a new generation of cancer treatments based on an improved understanding of
how normal cells turn deadly.
The traditional tools of cancer therapy -- surgery, chemotherapy and radiation
have failed to win the war on cancer, the second leading cause of death in
the United States. This fourth wave of cancer therapy, sometimes used in
conjunction with the older therapies, attacks the genetic origins of the disease.
''These are exciting times we're living in,'' said Dr. Lisa Bailey of the American
Cancer Society and a surgical oncologist at Summit and Alta Bates Medical
Centers in Berkeley/Oakland. ''We are discovering promising new ways that
cancer cells can be attacked, using biologic and genetic therapies.''
The new therapeutic virus known as Onyx-015 is one of several new
biologically based weapons that have been unveiled this week in Los Angeles
at the annual meeting of American Society of Clinical Oncology, the nation's
largest cancer conference. |
