Natural Science Forum / Biology / Biology / July 2006

(snipped to save space)

Good reference site. So they call this techniqe virotherapy.

--- quoting in parts some of the above website ---
Biotechnology
Can a Virus Kill Cancer?
Genetic engineers are turning nasty, infectious microbes into smart
treatments for a deadly disease

By Joshua Tomkins  April 2005

In February, researchers at UCLA announced a clash of the titans,
biochemically speaking: They turned one of the great scourges of
humankind-HIV-into a hunter of another: cancer. In tests on mice
afflicted with metastatic melanoma, a modified strain of HIV invaded
cancer cells without infecting the rodents with AIDS. Around the same
time, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, announced
similar results after engineering the measles virus to seek and destroy
cancerous tumors while leaving healthy tissue unscathed.

The close timing of these breakthroughs speaks to the flurry of
activity in the field of virotherapy, which exploits the tendency of
viruses to attack cancer cells in a pitched battle that cancer often
loses. With preliminary studies showing many of these viruses to be
safe for humans, several universities and biotech firms are now
conducting clinical trials of virotherapy.

As radical as it sounds, the idea of turning viruses loose on cancer
actually predates the genetic technology that now fuels it. During the
1950s, scientists proved that adenovirus, a version of the common cold
bug, was mildly effective against cervical cancer. But research was
abandoned as chemotherapy gained prominence, and virotherapy was
resurrected only after a study published in the journal Science in 1991
showed that a virus could be genetically modified to invade a tumor
without inflicting disease.

(snipped)

Likewise, the HIV strain in the UCLA melanoma study was targeted, and
researchers have since tailored it to seek and destroy prostate and
melanoma cancers. "Basically, we put different hooks on the virus so
it can hold on to different molecules," says Irvin S.Y. Chen,
director of the UCLA AIDS Institute.

(snipped)

--- end quoting in parts ---

I wanted to include some of the history of this technique. History is
important in understanding.

As the poster also reasserted my claim that researchers have never
really delved into the issue of virus to other viral interactions. We
simply have little knowledge on this and are mostly in the dark.

What would happen if we create a huge massive culture and added every
known virus into this culture. Would one virus emerge as the conqueror
virus. Would one virus produce some sort of suppressant that kills or
stagnates all other viruses. Is there a virus that acts like penicillin
to other viruses. Our knowledge and understanding of viral interactions
is crude and primitive.

We are missing many answers as to why the 1918 birdflu virus
disappeared or stagnated for the past 90 years and is just recently
emerged. Could it be that some other virus in the past 90 year interval
suppressed birdflu? Perhaps some common cold virus suppresses H5N1.

I note that some males in Vietnam are immune to H5N1. Could it be that
this person has some other virus in his body that confers that
immunity. Perhaps some hepatitis virus or some other virus confers
immunity to H5N1.

If that is true in part or whole, we need to find out about this as the
most important defense and weapon to use on H5N1 to stop it from going
pandemic.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies