July 25, 2012

Tailor-made viruses for enhanced cancer therapy




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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