Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Medical
Center's Abramson Cancer Unit have been using the breakthrough treatment
with great success in clinical trials that began in 2010.
The virus has been engineered so that it can't cause the
disease anymore but it still retains a program so that it will now
attack cancer cells. Each call can kill more than 1,000 cancer cells.
A 70-year-old retired corrections officer,
was at the end of the line when he volunteered to be the first person to
sign up for the experimental therapy. He hadn't responded to 10 years of chemotherapy or other treatments. The altered HIV penetrated his ailing body and he has been cancer-free for five years.
The patient, who was suffering chronic lymphocytic cancer, was
among 14 patients in the initial phase of clinical trials to respond
favorably, with others like him in remission more than five years. More extraordinary, 90 percent of the some 40 children involved in the breakthrough therapy are also showing positive results.
Researchers are hopeful that someday this remarkable therapy will win
FDA approval that would allow wide-scale use. Medical researchers are
now beginning clinical trials with the altered HIV on patients with
other forms of cancer, including pancreatic, ovarian, brain and forms of
blood cancer.
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