Viruses & Cancer

Viruses, the smallest of "living" things (actually on the borderline between the animate and inanimate worlds), seek various kinds of higher cells to parasitize, according to their inscrutable, individual natures. What more logical, reasoned researchers, than to find a virus which would seek out cancer cells and thus, while procreating itself, destroy them?

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. chose cancer of the cervix to study, picked some odd particles called adenoviruses* to attack the tumors. Last week the N.I.H.'s Dr.

Robert J. Huebner gave some preliminary, still tentative results.

Adenoviruses and Coxsackie viruses (which cause a disease like nonparalytic polio) grown in cancer cells could, when injected directly into cervical cancers, cause the tumor to shrink and arrest the bleeding which troubled the patients. But they had no effect on the course of the disease: cancer cells on the edges of the tumor mass continued to proliferate and soon killed the patient. But when the researchers grew human-type cancers in rats, they found that successive generations of the virus developed an increasing ability to kill cancer cells. Next step: to test the selectively bred viruses in human subjects, to see whether they have more lasting tumor-destroying powers.

Five years after the cobalt-60 machine went into operation for cancer treatment at London, Ont., Dr. Ivan Smith evaluated its advantages: it is best in cancer of the larynx, least effective in lung cancer; it gives more relief in several other forms of cancer than ordinary X rays; though it "has not revolutionized the treatment of cancer," cobalt 60 is a boon because it does less damage to healthy skin and bone, is less likely to cause radiation sickness.

*A newly coined name for viruses which cause upper respiratory infections somewhere between the common cold and influenza.

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