Winning the War on Cancer

Jasmine Garcia

Professor Petkovic

English 101

Rough Draft

                                          Winning the war on Cancer

Scientists are creating entirely new immune-therapies by modifying the genes of viruses, old diseases that are effectively being turned into the equivalent of guided missiles of cancer destruction.  Generations of doctors have treated their cancer patients with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy in hopes that they could slow or reverse cancer growth before the therapies’ would kill their patients.  Dr. Carl June, Dr. Bell, Dr. Stephen Russel, and Dr. Juan Fueyo and partner Dr. Frederick Lang are reprogramming the HIV, measles, common cold, and small pox virus to target cancer cells directly.  Researchers hope they can fight cancer by using the body’s own immune system instead of slowly poisoning their patients. Providing patients with cancer vaccines, immune modulatory drugs, and T cell engineering therapy in real human trials is a huge undertaking that gives us hope that we may finally be close to the point where we can finally defeat cancer.

New research is being done using the HIV virus to kill blood cancer also known as leukemia. In the HBO Vice special report “killing cancer,”  a 6year old young girl named Emily Whitehead is battling lymphoblastic leukemia was undergoing into chemotherapy for 3 years.  She had relapses from 85% to 90% chance to 30% chances of living. She was part of a clinical trial at the Children’s hospital in Pennsylvania, making her the first pediatric patient to be part of Dr. Carl June’s T cell therapy trial.

Surprisingly by modifying the HIV virus, a virus that has been caused Aids for the last 30 years, is now being genetically modified to target and destroy cancer cells.  The HIV virus attaches to the patients T cells and gets them to target leukemia cells and not normal cells. T cells are the very foundation of our immune system.  Emily was infused with a genetically modified version of the HIV virus and experienced severe symptoms and went into a coma for 14 days. Emily woke from the coma and was pronounced cancer free. After 4 weeks Emily went into remission. Before Emily, there were 36 patients who had gone through the T cell therapy, 90% had been cured of leukemia. This proves that genetically modified viruses like HIV can potentially be a cure some types of leukemia.

In the HBO Special report by Vice “Killing Cancer”, Dr. Bell is recognized for being the first to modify the genetic instructions of the small pox in order to attack cancer cells without hurting healthy cells.  In 2010 Vaccina was infused into a cancer patient named Michael who was suffering from a brain tumor. A vaccine was created with genetically modified small pox and infused into patients arm to target cancer cells. Four weeks later he was announced cancer free. Dr. Bell says “Things are going to be different we’re actually going to treat people. They’re going to get cured from their disease and this is going to happen in our lifetime” Dr. Bell feels very confidently that his small pox virus may be a cure for brain cancer.

Dr. Juan Fueyo director of Neuron-oncology at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas has done something similar to Dr. Bell’s immunotherapy trail. Dr. Fueyo and his partner Fredrick Lang genetically engineered the common cold virus to strengthen their patients’ immune system and attack cancerous Glioblastoma also known as brain tumors without damaging the patient’s body like chemotherapy would.  They experimented on mice to see if the virus will work by injected it into human cancerous tumor cells implanted the mice brain. Dr. Fredrick Lang’s study has shown that in three weeks the mice’s tumors had vanish and their brains were back to its normal state. Michael Connor skull was drill through and his tumor was injected with the cold virus.  The virus then enters the tumor destroying all cancerous cells and exploding every single cancer cell is gone.  Dr. Fredrick Lang says “It’s impossible to know what’s the best agent at this point, but I think the best perspective is the more options we have, the better. Different tumors might respond best to different viral immunotherapies.” (Huston Chronicle).   It is not necessarily a treatment, but a cure using viruses to fight cancer is a rapidly developing field that shows great results.