Polio is hardly associated with anything pleasant but in the case of brain cancer research scientists at Duke University are carrying out, the virus can be considered a savior.
Matthias Gromeier, M.D. has been working on using the polio virus as a cure for brain cancer for 25 years, the last 15 of which he has spent with Duke University. When he first presented the idea to his colleagues, to say they were skeptical is an understatement. Given the polio virus' reputation, many of them were simply afraid that what Gromeier is doing is dangerous.
To address concerns raised by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, safety trials were done for seven years on monkeys. Out of the 39 subjects Gromeier and colleagues worked with, none developed polio. This prompted the FDA to allow clinical trials on people in 2011, with Stephanie Lipscomb as the first participant.
She was 20 years old at the time she was told she had glioblastoma. Lipscomb had a tumor as big as a tennis ball at the time of diagnosis and it meant she just had months to live. After undergoing chemotherapy, 98 percent of her tumor shrank but the cancer came back in 2012. Feeling like she had nothing to lose, Lipscomb enrolled in the clinical trial testing the polio virus' effect on glioblastoma.
For the treatment, patients were administered about a teaspoonful of the polio virus directly on to their tumors. It's a tedious process because getting in that much of the virus into the brain takes about six and a half hours, plus the surgeon has to make sure that none of the virus gets to the other parts of the brain. While polio contains larger molecules that limits its movement, ensuring that the virus is administered in the right spot is key to guaranteeing it stays where it should.
Gromeier explained that the treatment works by tearing away the protective layer that shields cancer cells from the body's immune system. Infecting the tumor with polio signals to the immune system that something is wrong so it gets to work. And with the shield gone, cancer cells are just as vulnerable to the attacks of the immune system as other invading cells.
Three years after getting a shot of polio in her brain, Lipscomb is now cancer-free. Researchers say that the FDA should be deciding in about a year if the treatment will be given "breakthrough status" to make it available to more patients sooner.
Every year, 12,000 Americans succumb to glioblastoma.
Photo: Neuroscience News | Flickr
