AILESBURY Dermatology: 'Common cold virus may save lives of melanoma patients' by Dr. Patrick Treacy

June 21, 2009 - PRLog -- The work is a cover story in the January 2004 edition of Clinical Cancer Research a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), where the team have published a paper that melanoma cells can be destroyed by infecting them with a common cold virus. The extraordinary development came after Australian scientists found skin cancer cells died when injected with coxsackie A21 – a common air-borne virus associated with the common cold. The virus was found to kill known melanoma cells in immunocomprimised mice within five hours of injection before then spreading throughout the body and attaching itself to other, previously undiagnosed tumours, and attacking them. The Cutting Edge has also learned that the innovate discovery has already been tested successfully on human cells in laboratory conditions although it has not been tested on human subjects.

Cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM), is considered the most serious type of skin cancer because of its rapid ability to spread to other parts of the body, including the eye. It starts when melanocytes become abnormal and invade and destroy the normal cells around them. On average each year, about 375 new cases of malignant melanoma of the skin are diagnosed in Ireland each year, 235 in females, and 140 in males. Every year about 60 people in Ireland die of CMM, of these about 32 are female and 28 are male. This makes CMM the 6th most frequent category of malignant cancer in females, but only the 12th most frequent in males. On average, an Irish female is estimated to have a 1-in-100 chance of developing this cancer by age 74, while males a 1-in-150 chance. CMM is now the most common cancer amongst Irish women aged 20-29 years. Irish females also have the third highest number of cases of this form of skin cancer in the EU, while Irish males have the sixth highest out of 15 other European nations. (EUCAN study Ferlay et al 1999). Within the EU, a north-south gradient is evident with melanoma rates higher in the more northerly countries, especially Sweden. This is consistent with the hypothesis that intermittent sunlight exposure in sun-sensitive individuals may be a critical factor in melanoma development.

I spoke to Dr. Shafren soon after the discovery and he told the Irish Medical Times "this appears to be a significant break-through in the treatment of cutaneous melanoma and the results we have had to date using human cells and animal studies have been very exciting.” Dr Shafren continued, "we succeeded in giving an injection of coxsackie A21 virus into a melanomatous tumour of an immunocomprimised mouse and within a few days it had not only killed the lesion but also one on another part of the body." "If we can replicate that success in human trials, the treatment of this often fatal disease could be available within the next few years.” “Obviously, the patients would have to screen antibody negative to the virus for it to be effective”

Coxsackie A is a cytolytic virus of the Picornaviridae family, a enterovirus (a group containing the polioviruses, coxsackieviruses, and echoviruses). The virus was first documented in 1948, during an investigation into polio, and was named after the settlement in which it was found, Coxsackie, New York. There are 61 non-polio enteroviruses that can cause disease in humans, of them 23 are Coxsackie A viruses (6 are Coxsackie B viruses). Enterovirus are the second most common viral infectious agents in humans (after the rhinoviruses). The most well known Coxsackie A disease is Hand-Foot-and-Mouth Disease, a common childhood illness, often produced by Coxsackie A16. In most cases infection is asymptomatic or causes only mild symptoms. In others, infection produces short-lived (7-10 days) fever and painful blisters in the mouth, on the palms and fingers of the hand, or on the soles of the feet. Other diseases include acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis (A24 specifically), herpangina, and aseptic meningitis (both Coxsackie A and B viruses). Coxsackie B viruses also cause infectious myocarditis, infectious pericarditis, and pleurodynia. Viruses have waged war against man throughout the centuries and recently in these columns we have detailed the recent link that has been discovered between Epstein-Barr virus and human cancer IMT June 6, 2003 and more recently the battle we are fighting against the raging HIV pandemic on the African continent. Now, this team may have identified a potential way that viruses can be used by the body to fight and destroy disease. The discovery means that viruses could be used in the future either as a stand-alone therapy or possibly incorporated into more conventional radiation and chemotherapeutic strategies as an effective "three-pronged attack" on melanoma. It is too early to say whether the discovery could also mean surgery on melanomas could become obsolete, because the coxsackie A21 virus would effectively dissolve tumours from within. It is also possible that the treatment could be used to combat other forms of cancer, including prostate and breast cancer, within a decade. Professor Shafren admits that an immunocomprimised mouse model is not ideal and the results may not translate into the human model. "As many as 10% of people may have immunity to the cocksackie virus and there have been many other great medical techniques that have fallen down whenever they were moved from the mouse to the human cell environment. Dr Shafren said he was hopeful approval for research on human subjects would be obtained by the end of next year.

Professor Shafren said the coxsackie virus had much more in common with the receptors found on malignant melanoma cells than healthy cells. "It is like a lock and key thing and if the virus does not have the combination it does not get into the cell," he continued. "This particular virus has the combination and therefore the probability of this virus killing the cancer cells than the healthy cells is much higher”. "Theoretically you get a new virus approximately five hours after infection starts and what we have found with the melanoma cells in the lab we get complete destruction of these cells within eight to 10 hours after they are exposed to the virus."

Dr Shafren said the breakthrough was significant "but it is very hard to say we have the cure".

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