YOU would have thought the last thing dying patients needed was a dose of
herpes. But researchers in Scotland have shown that a strain of this potentially
lethal virus can safely be used to tackle otherwise untreatable brain
cancers.
Of nine patients given only months to live, four are still alive up to three
years after the virus was injected into their tumours in a preliminary safety
trial. If further trials are successful, the treatment could be applied to other
aggressive cancers, such as skin and ovarian cancer.
The team, led by Moira Brown of the University of Glasgow, used…
