Can cancer be destroyed using viruses?

[Physics5000]

I don't see why we couldn't genetically engineer viruses to have correct DNA. And use them to replace or fix the corrupt DNA in cancer cells.

[JaKiri]

We do. That's what gene therapy is.

[JaKiri]

Not cancer though. Too hard to individually target.

[Dudde]

like...

design a virus that would correct the DNA in the cancerous cells? ..it would have to kill off some of the already formed cells as well, and you'd have to catch it early or program it to chase down the cells that travel through other systems

[Skye]

blike posted a story about it in the news section.

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=1106

It just kills the tumor cells, it doesn't fix them.

[Giles]

Surely cold viruses are unusally prone to mutation (i suppose that could be an artefact of their endemic status). if it's very virulent, and genuinely confined to cancer cells, that would help mitigate against a mutant arising, but it still seems probable if the treatment is widely used.

 

i can't see this being a 100% safe therapy (in so far as there is such a thing) no matter what they do or how extensively they test. it'd still be worth using ofc, but watch out for a media scare story.

[Skye]

I think most patients with a terminal brain tumor would accept any risks given a chance of recovery but maybe it could mutate into a serious disease-causing virus that affects others.

[NavajoEverclear]

Yeah I read blike's post, and I personally think that is so awesome. My area has a 10 time higher cancer rate than average and it specifically in a certain area of this county (Davis, Utah) not infecting surrounding places. It seems nobody is sure why, we used to think it was the burnplant because that is about in the center of the radius of problems, but the burnplant is next to the airforce base, and I heard some rumor about chemicals there seeped into the ground. Anyway I would so love to see a treatment---- couldn't you almost call that a cure? My scoutmaster died of lukemia a few years ago. My close friends my friends father lost his first wife to a malignant brain tumor--- he remarried and his next wife had breast cancer, she had a mastectomy and is so far cancer free. My other friend lost her father to a brain tumor. These people live just in a mile radius.

I don't know if the Mormon film Charly came out much anywhere else in the country (personally, I think the acting was mediocre, but if you think about how life really occurs, its pretty accurate), well its a love story, which in the end the man loses his wife to cancer------ that story is too close to home, I do not know what I would do if that happened to my wife-- it would be the most terrible thing in the world. It would be about the most amazing thing to have a chance to escape from such a horrible situation.

[mooeypoo]

I'm not much of a medicine woman myself, but here are my two cents:

 

If you create a virus that will repair DNA, aren't you taking a great danger that you lose control over this virus? Like happening in agriculture - farmers braught several animals to reduce the population of pests, and ended up with an entire population of predators that since they don't belong to the territory, have shifted the balance.

 

I am not saying cancer is not bad -- Its a terrible desease, and we need to find a cure, of course -- but we should also concider the consequences.

 

Maybe this is not the right place to quote movies, but I'll dare . If any of you seen Jurassic Park, the math professor is saying something very smart, and true -- nature always finds ways to restore the balance.

 

If we mess with things we don't understand, we might destroy more than we are prepared for.

 

In any case, the idea that a virus is used to fix Cancer is weird to me.

But I guess we'll know the results in many many years.

 

Or... maybe it's good I'm not into medicine... hehe

 

 

~mooeypoo

[apollo2011]

They do gene therapy for other genetic diseases...