Professor Fong is currently in Australia and is preparing clinical trials that are later planned to be carried out in Europe and the USA. The trials will involve patients with triple negative breast cancer, melanoma, lung cancer, bladder, stomach, and intestines.
American cancer specialist Yuman Fong, together with Australian biotechnology company Imugene, is developing a cancer treatment called CF33. The new virus he bred is a hybrid of the vaccinia virus and the common cold virus in humans. It is capable of killing cells of all types of cancer in a petri dish and reducing malignant tumors in mice. Human trials will be held next year.
Success with mice does not guarantee that the virus can heal people, but Professor Fong is full of hope.
“Since the early 1900s, there has been evidence that some viruses can kill cancer. For example, in people vaccinated against rabies, the cancer disappeared or remission occurred, ”the scientist says. “The problem was that if you made the virus strong enough to kill cancer, you could also kill a person.”
Testing showed that the vaccinia virus (with the help of which it was possible 200 years ago to create a vaccine and successfully protect people from the smallpox epidemic) in combination with some other viruses can kill cancer cells.
For a cancer patient, the drug will be administered directly to the tumor. The virus must infect a malignant tumor and cause it to self-destruct. It is expected that then the immune system will receive a warning about other cancer cells in the body, which will lead to their complete death.
