New developments have been made in the treatments of different types of cancer.
A study has shown it may be possible to treat skin cancer with a modified version of the herpes virus that causes cold sores, whereas elsewhere a new device has been developed that could potentially shrink pancreatic tumours.
A genetically engineered version of the herpes virus, known as T-Vec, is said to be a potential factor in helping prolong the lives of people diagnosed with melanoma.
Though harmless to normal cells, if T-Vec is injected directly into the tumour it replicates and releases GM-CSF and multiplies inside cancer cells and bursts them from within.
T-Vec would be the first melanoma treatment that uses a virus but it is not yet licensed.
The study, which has been ongoing for more than three years, included a total of 436 patients who had inoperable malignant melanoma from centres in the UK, the US, Canada and South Africa.
Dr Hayley Frend, science information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: “Previous studies have shown T-Vec could benefit some people with advance skin cancer, but this is the first study to prove an increase in survival.”
Professor Kevin Harrington, trial leader from the UK, said: “There is increasing excitement over the use of viral treatments like T-Vec for cancer, because they can launch a two-pronged attack on tumours – both killing cancer cells directly and marshalling the immune system against them.”
"Because viral treatment can target cancer cells specifically, it tends to have fewer side effects than traditional chemotherapy or some of the other new immunotherapies."
From here, the next thing to do is to see why only certain people respond to the treatment to narrow down who it is more suited to, says Frend.
Though some claims have been made V-Tec is the ‘cure’ to pancreatic, breast and other solid cancers, the trial results, published online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, state only one in five patients responded positively proving these claims misguided.
Melanoma is the fifth most common cancer in the UK and kills 2,000 people each year.
In other cancer news, work published in Science Transitional Medicine revealed American researchers have discovered a way to directly treat pancreatic tumours using a method called “iontophoresis”.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina have developed a device which can deliver chemotherapy drugs directly into tumour tissue using electric fields.
During their studies, researchers found the delivery methods prevented the growth of tumours and even helped shrink them.
The team built a setup with a small reservoir designed to hold a liquid chemotherapy drug and used the electric fields to drive the drug into the tumour tissue.
The device could be used two ways: internally (for pancreatic cancer) using minimally invasive surgery to implant the device’s electrodes directly onto the tumour, and externally (for breast and neck cancer) to deliver drugs through the skin.
This creation is important for sufferer of pancreatic cancer as the tumours can be particularly difficult to treat, due to the cancer cells being blocked by tissues preventing usual cancer-treating drugs to gain access through the bloodstream.
Currently, surgery to remove a pancreatic tumour is the best cure. However, successful surgery relies on an early diagnosis isn’t always the case for some, says Joseph DeSimone and William R. Kenan Jr., professors at University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University, respectively.
“Often a diagnosis comes too late for a patient to be eligible for surgery due to the tendency of the tumours to become intertwined with major organs and blood vessels.”
Using iontophoresis has been found to be more effective than the usual IV methods.
Jen Jen Yeh, co-author of the study, said: “Once this goes to clinical trials, it could shift the paradigm for pancreatic cancer treatments – or any other solid tumours where standard IV chemotherapy drugs are hard to get to.”
This approach has so far only been conducted on mice and dogs with pancreatic and breast cancer, although the team hope to take the device to clinical trials once further tests have been conducted.
Dr James Byrne, leader of the study, said: “We hope our invention can be used in humans in the coming years and result in notable increase of life expectancy and quality among patients diagnosed with pancreatic and other types of cancer.”