if there is to be a cure for cancer how would it work, would it be for example a genetically modified virus that

Question: if there is to be a cure for cancer how would it work, would it be for example a genetically modified virus that destroys the cancerous cells.
- Keywords:
  cancer,
  medicine
Asked by louismart to Lyn, Katy, Paul, PB, Ruth on 27 Jun 2013.
- Paul Waines answered on 27 Jun 2013:
  
  Hi louismart- now that is a great idea- are you a scientist in disguise?!
  A cure for cancer is most likely going to be a chemical rather than a virus. This is because its probably easier to make a chemical which will only attack cancer cells and leave healthy cells alone.
  
  However, viruses need cells because they can’t multiply without them. For some types of cancer, using a virus which has had its DNA changed to make it want to attack only cancer cells might be the only way to make sure that it can be cured without damaging healthy cells.
  
  I’ll put your idea to my colleagues and see what they say!
- Ee Lyn Lim answered on 28 Jun 2013:
  
  Actually, Paul – it’s the opposite! I personally believe that the cure for cancer is not going to be a chemical – a chemical is blind, and will just float into any cell it can get to! That’s why we have so many side effects in chemotherapy now. We can make chemicals that will kill cancer cells faster than other cells, but there will always be healthy cells that are hit at the same time, and eventually you’re just going to kill the patient too!
  
  The idea of a genetically modified virus is a great one! We’ve been working on them for some time, they’re called oncolytic viruses (‘onco’ is science-speak for cancer, and ‘lytic’ means to break apart). These viruses specifically recognise cancer cells, which they will then infect and kill. Most of these viruses are engineered to recognise specific features of cancer cells, but there are also naturally-occurring viruses that have evolved to take advantage of the same features that help cancer cells grow. Some of these viruses are being tested in human patients as we speak, and if the results are good they should be used in the clinic soon!
  
  But again – while viruses are one good treatment option for cancer, I don’t think it would be THE cure, that gets rid of all cancer! That’s because viruses need something to recognise in order to specifically infect cancer cells, and not all cancer cells have this handle for them to grab on to. Even if they did, every type of cancer would be different – in fact every cancer patient would be different – so we’d need to engineer an almost infinite number of different viruses to cure every variant! That wouldn’t work very well…
  
  Personally I think the only way to CURE cancer is to rely on our own immune system. Our immune system has a built-in strategy to be highly specific, it naturally recognises a huge variety of antigens much better than anything we could ever engineer. That means that if we could just find ONE kind of therapy that makes our immune system go attack the cancer, it should theoretically be able tackle any kind of cancer cell, anywhere in the body – that’s what I would call a cure! But considering the complexity of cancer, and the fact that it’s already so successful at hiding from the immune system (which is why the immune system doesn’t get rid of it in the first place) this one therapy will be very difficult to discover – it’s hard to even tell if it will be a chemical drug, or a virus, or even nanorobots!
  
  But – dare I say this – I’m working on it 😉

Question: if there is to be a cure for cancer how would it work, would it be for example a genetically modified virus that destroys the cancerous cells.

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