British scientists say they have used Herpes virus to successfully treat some patients with head and neck cancer (including oral, tongue and palate cancer). This research opens up hopes for cancer patients, especially patients who are not detected early.
The Royal Marsden Hospital in London tested this method on 17 patients.Doctors here used Herpes virus to combine current standard treatments of chemotherapy and irradiation to kill tumors in patients.
Results 93% no longer show signs of disease after surgery to remove the tumor.Over 2 years later, 82% (13 patients) were resistant to the disease and only 2 of them recurred.
The mechanism of this method is that cancer patients will receive high doses of Herpes virus.This virus will invade and destroy from inside cancer cells, as well as promote the immune system activity of patients.
Herpes virus is also being tested in the treatment of skin cancer.This is a virus that does not reproduce so it only grows inside cancer cells but does not affect other healthy cells.
Subsequent tests are scheduled to be carried out by the hospital later this year.
Dr. Kevin Harrington of the London Cancer Research Institute, the lead researcher, said the current treatments are only effective for cancer patients who are detected early, however, many patients diagnosed when the disease has developed quite badly.
The team thinks that using this virus is a powerful tool: both helping to kill cancer cells and helping to produce proteins that activate the immune system and also create proteins that lead cells. immune cells.
Although there are still concerns about the safety of this treatment, team members hope their research will one day be used to treat other types of cancer.
Dr Harrington said that with chemotherapy and irradiation about 35 to 55% of patients still relapse within 2 years, so the new method still gives better results.
Now the team is planning to test on some newly diagnosed head and neck cancers to compare the effectiveness between the two treatments.
Although more time is needed to test compared with current standard treatments prior to the official treatment for cancer patients, the initial success of this method opens up. Hopefully there will be a new weapon against cancer.
Herpes virus is very common in life with the usual manifestations of lip ulcers (Herpes mouth) and genital ulcers (genital herpes).
Herpes virus has two types of HSV-1 causing oral Herpes and HSV-2 causing genital Herpes.
Herpes can recover on its own without treatment, but the pathogen remains in the body and will recur at any time, especially when the immune system is weak.