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Skin cancer hopes A genetically engineered virus has been shown to “cure” patients of skin cancer, raising hopes of an end to chemotherapy. In a worldwide study led by the Institute of Cancer Research in Britain, scientists showed that the new treatment allowed some patients with melanoma to live for more than three years — the benchmark many oncologists use to define a cure. The therapy, called T-VEC, works by infecting and killing cancer cells while also kicking the immune system into action against tumours. Charities said the development was exciting and offered new hope to many patients. “Patients showing responses beyond three years is something that up until now, we could only have imagined,” said Gillian Nuttall, the founder of Melanoma UK. The clinical trials, which have been ongoing for more than three years, have been conducted in 64 centres across the UK, United States, Canada and South Africa. The results show 163 patients with stage-three and early stage-four melanoma who were treated with T-VEC lived for an average of 41 months. That was compared with an average survival of 21.5 months for the patients who were given the best immunotherapy drugs. Crucial Ebola find Ebola’s Achilles heel has been identified by a team of scientists, prompting hopes of new treatments to stop the virus spreading. Researchers in New York believe they have located the vital protein, which affects whether or not the virus can spread to infect its victim. Their study found the virus can only invade host cells by attaching to the protein — called Niemann-Pick C1 (NPC1). If it is unable to access that protein, it loses the ability to infect and kill its victim. The disease has infected almost 27,000 people, killing 11,135, in the last 18 months. Almost all of the cases recorded by the World Health Organisation were in Guinea, where the outbreak originated, Sierra Leone and Liberia. On May 9, the WHO declared Liberia Ebola-free. Scientists across the world have focused their efforts on examining the disease, to try to develop the world’s first effective vaccine. Dr Kartik Chandran and his team from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, believe blocking the pathway between the virus and the NPC1 protein could provide total protection against the virus. linked to powerful Tobruk tribal leaders. Libya is consumed by chaos. The country split is between an elected Parliament and weak government, and a rival government and Parliament in Tripoli set up by the Islamist-linked militias that took control of the capital, forcing the Government to relocate to the far eastern cities of Tobruk and Bayda.