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Med_vs_Pretty_Huge t1_iv3piy4 wrote

Reply to comment by mayonnace in Could a blood transfusion spread cancer to another person? by SnooRegrets2663

You said a programmable virus that you can program to target a specific tissue that was discovered in chicks. NDV is a virus in chickens that can be programmed to do that.

Yes, NDV (and other viral vector-based) cancer therapies are in development. They are not ready for primetime because it's a delicate balance between a viral vector that won't be immediately cleared by the immune system but also won't cause a severe infection and then you need a mechanism of action against the tumor that the virus can encode that isn't toxic to the person while also being effective at killing cancer cells. Also, unlike drugs, these viruses can potentially mutate which is another safety concern.

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mayonnace t1_iv5v15z wrote

I see. Thank you for the explanation.

I remember people talking about personalized drugs for cancer in past, which wouldn't have the problems of infection or immune response, but I'm guessing that would be extremely expensive.

Perhaps the researchers can find a way to target all sorts of cancer cells, and somehow develop a vaccine, so the immune system itself can cleanse any possible cancer. They can't even find a general vaccine for flu though. So, I don't have much hope. May be if they could target cells with something other than their outer surface... But they must have already been thinking about it. Hard stuff.

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Med_vs_Pretty_Huge t1_iv7f9j1 wrote

Your intuition and comparison to flu is correct. The genome of flu is miniscule and yet it mutates enough every year to render prior vaccines and infections less effective. "Cancer" is hundreds or thousands of different diseases with different mutations etc. It will be a marvel when market approval comes for a vaccine that eliminates a single type of cancer (e.g. a melanoma "vaccine"). A universal cancer vaccine will likely never happen. It's like having a single vaccine for every virus and bacteria on the planet.

Internal antigens are certainly investigated but yes, they are harder because they will only be exposed to the immune system in small pieces on MHC class 1 molecules and thus it can be even harder to differentiate tumor from normal. The checkpoint inhibitors enhance the immune system's ability to do this to an extent but they are non-specific boosters of immune function and can result in life-threatening autoimmune disease.

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