Tailor-made
viruses for enhanced cancer therapy
No. 39 |
23/07/2012 | by Koh
Parvoviruses
specifically kill cancer cells and are already in the clinical trial stage for
treating malignant brain tumors. However, as they can also infect normal cells
- without doing any harm to them -, a large portion of viruses is lost during
therapy. Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches
Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have now modified parvoviruses in such a way that
they initially lose their ability to infect cells. In a second step, they
equipped the viruses with a molecular key for infecting cancer cells.
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