VIRUSES hitching a lift on the body’s own immune cells could target and kill stray secondary cancers that emerge after the primary tumour has been removed.
The technique, which has been successfully tested in mice, involves screening the patient’s blood along with tissue from the primary tumour for specialised T-cells which home in on the cancer. Once these have been identified and extracted, they are loaded with viruses containing a gene that primes the cancer cells for destruction by making them vulnerable to the drug ganciclovir.
The viruses don’t actually infect the T-cells, but hitch a ride wherever the T-cells…
