A virus against pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer affects 12  000 people in France each year and is still difficult to treat. Any therapeutic advances create huge hopes. Team 10  studied the feasibility of a treatment based on the injection of an oncolytic virus, i.e. a virus specifically able to infect and destroy cancer cells. The idea is not new and several other teams around the world have already tested certain viruses with different cancers. This time, researchers worked with a Herpes simplex-derived virus rendered harmless for the healthy cells of the body but able to replicate specifically in pancreatic cancer cells to destroy them. This feat required numerous changes of the viral genome.