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There is a virus that stops the development of aggressive brain cancer
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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This is not the first time that viruses have been used in the treatment of various diseases. This technology has been tested and often helps in curing many serious pathologies. For example, scientists have recently discovered a specific virus that directly affects the quality of human immunity: this virus "spurs" the person's own defense to destroy foreign malignant cells.
The discovery was made by specialists from the UK. As experts have reassured, the so-called reovirus does not pose a particular danger to the human body and can easily overcome the blood-brain membrane - the main barrier protecting the central nervous system. Reovirus easily penetrates a malignant neoplasm localized in the brain and stimulates the immune system, directing it to fight the tumor in a natural way.
The specialists described the course of the study in detail. The trial involved sick people who had one terrible diagnosis - an aggressive form of cancerous brain tumors. All these patients had already been scheduled for surgery, so they readily agreed to take part in the experiment. A few days before the surgery, the participants were injected intravenously with reovirus: after a while, it was successfully detected in the tissues removed during resection, and the removed tumors became noticeably smaller in size. The head of the experiment, Professor Adel Samson, explains: “For the first time, scientists have managed to prove the ability of the virus to penetrate the blood-brain defense, opening up access to immunological treatment. This will help overcome the disease in many people with aggressive cancer. Reovirus is able to “spur” the human immune system, marking malignant structures and making them “noticeable” to the immune system.”
Research into the new treatment method is currently ongoing: clinical trials are currently underway. Many medical specialists are already confident that the innovation will become a successful alternative to chemotherapy and radiation, and the frequency and number of procedures that are standardly used for malignant tumors will be significantly reduced.
Reoviruses are representatives of spherical viruses with a genome consisting of segmented double-stranded RNA. Previously, it was considered unlikely that viruses could penetrate the blood-brain defense, so scientists worked on the issue of introducing drugs directly into brain structures. However, now, after the studies, the situation with the treatment of cancerous tumors has become more encouraging.
"The presence of a cancerous tumor in the body indicates the weakness of the patient's own immunity. The introduction of the virus counteracts this process, activating the defenses and forcing them to attack the tumor," said one of the authors of the experiment.
Details of the project are published in the periodical New Atlas and are also presented on the pages of http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/422/eaam7577