A herpes virus helped 11 of 12 children's tumors respond

A team at the University of Alabama at Birmingham tested a genetically engineered herpes virus, stripped of the genes that cause disease, injected directly into the tumors of children whose cancer kept growing.

Gregory Friedman's team infused the virus, called G207, into the brains of twelve patients aged seven to eighteen through surgically placed catheters, sometimes followed by low-dose radiation. Eleven of the twelve showed a radiographic, clinical, or tissue-confirmed response, and median survival reached 12.2 months, more than double the historical figure.

The virus could not cause the usual disease, but it still triggered an immune response, flooding the tumors with infection-fighting cells and turning immunologically inactive, cold tumors hot. Four of eleven evaluable patients were still alive at eighteen months. The trial was a small, uncontrolled safety study, and larger trials are still needed before the approach becomes standard care.

A disabled virus, not a drug.