Designer virus fights cancer

Your immune system readily recognises viruses – and kills them. Cancer cells, however, can be invisible to your immune system and so they can spread.

Now a very clever new cancer treatment uses viruses to attach themselves to cancer cells and make them visible to the immune system, thereby making them amenable to anti-cancer drugs.

Scientists from Switzerland’s University of Basel claim their technique could, in theory, be used to fight any type of cancer. Scientists could take proteins from a patient’s tumour, place it in the virus and inject it into the body to trigger a strong immune response.

In mice, the treatment has been shown to bring remission, and researchers are keen to move to human trials. The research was published in the journal Natural Communications.