British scientists have successfully identified a virus that trigger a form of immunotherapy for brain cancer, it was announced last night.
Clinical trials are under way in Leeds of treatment with the virus, a reovirus, that can be injected directly into the patient’s blood stream.
Research in Leeds and London has shown that the virus can cross the blood brain barrier, infect tumours and stimulate the immune system to attack tumours.
In the clinical trial, it will be tested alongside radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
Details of the research were reported last night in Science Translational Medicine.
Nine patients volunteered for the first human studies. They received treatment prior to surgery – enabling scientists to study the impact of the virus on tissue removed during surgery.
The researchers say there was evidence of the virus reaching its target in all nine patients.
The first patient in the clinical trial, who has glioblastoma, will receive 16 doses of the virus after surgical resection of the tumour.
Dr Adel Samson, co-lead author and medical oncologist at the Leeds Institute of Cancer and Pathology, at the University of Leeds, said: "This is the first time it has been shown that a therapeutic virus is able to pass through the brain-blood barrier, and that opens up the possibility this type of immunotherapy could be used to treat more people with aggressive brain cancers.
"This study was about showing that a virus could be delivered to a tumour in the brain. Not only was it able to reach its target, but there were signs it stimulated the body’s own immune defences to attack the cancer."
Fellow researcher Professor Alan Melcher, of the Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: "Now we know we can get reovirus across the blood-brain barrier, we have begun clinical studies to see just how effective this viral immunotherapy can be at extending and improving the lives of patients with brain tumours, who currently have very limited treatment options available to them.”
Intravenous delivery of oncolytic reovirus to brain tumor patients immunologically primes for subsequent checkpoint blockade Science Translational Medicine 3 January 2018 [abstract]
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