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Scientists have developed a virus that destroys cancer cells
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
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A virus has been created that finds cancer cells on its own and inhibits the growth of metastatic tumors without affecting healthy tissue.
Our immune system must monitor cases of cancerous degeneration and eliminate cells that have become foreign to the body. And one of the conditions for the successful development of a tumor is its ability to suppress the immune response, to escape the attack. On the other hand, this is precisely why tumor cells are easy prey for viruses: the immune system does not know what is happening there, and the virus can easily reproduce. This could not help but prompt scientists to think about using viruses to fight cancer.
The main thing in developing such a method of treatment is to be able to teach the virus to search for malignant cells so that after the injection of viral particles they themselves find their targets, without leaving a single metastasis. As reported by researchers from Jennerex Biotherapeutics, they have managed to obtain a virus that itself searches for cancer cells and kills them.
The JX-594 virus, which successfully avoids immune attacks, is equipped with a special protein that directs the immune attack to the tumor. Thus, the cancer cell dies both from the virus itself, which is intensively multiplying in it, and from the “awakened” immune system. Ten days after a single injection of JX-594 to twenty-three patients with metastatic cancer, the virus completely infected cancer cells in seven of the eight subjects without any side effects; healthy tissues were not affected by the viral infection. Several weeks later, the tumor stopped growing in half of the experiment participants, and in one it even decreased in size.
The researchers presented the results of the experiment in the journal Nature.
It should be emphasized that this is not the first attempt to force a virus to destroy a malignant tumor, but here for the first time the fate of the virus and its behavior in the body are being traced: how fully it infects cancer cells, how successfully it reproduces, and whether it encroaches on healthy tissue.
The researchers intend to create a whole series of similar viruses in order to “set” them on different types of tumors.
Colleagues urge the authors of the work to pay closer attention to the relationship between the immune system and the virus itself. After all, if the virus is affected by some mutation and becomes “visible” to the immune system, there will be no trace of the antitumor weapon, which will give cancer a chance to return.
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