A casual conversation could be the start of a new cancer treatment.
Doctors at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute got a $200,000
grant. The idea is to use a virus to destroy an aggressive type
of brain cancer called glioblastoma. Normally within a year of being
diagnosed someone passes away. The drugs that are used to treat it now
can lose their effectiveness according to VTC doctors. If this works it could be used to treat other cancers too.
Two doctors were just chatting about their research when they came up with the new idea. "We
need to be creative and think about new approaches to go after it and I
think the next generation of drugs we will be moving towards this kind
of approach, an approach based on vehicles like viruses that are kind of
like a Trojan horse getting a drug delivered into the brain tissue,"
said Dr. Robert Gourdie, who concentrates on heart research. "We
think that if it works it will be very, very beneficial for this type
of cancer," said Dr. Zhi Sheng, who researches cancer. They hope to be testing the new treatment on animals within the next year. In two years they hope to be testing it on humans.
No comments:
Post a Comment