Trials show promise of human virus to treat head and neck cancer patients
A naturally-occurring harmless human virus may be able to boost the effects of two standard chemotherapy drugs in some cancer patients, according to Phase I/II trial results.
RT3D, trade name Reolysin, is a new drug developed by Oncolytics Biotech Inc that has the ability to grow in and kill certain types of cancer cells, but not normal cells. It is based on a virus (reovirus type 3 Dearing) that is found in almost all adults’ respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts without causing any symptoms.
Dr Kevin Harrington and colleagues tested intravenous RT3D in combination with chemotherapeutics carboplatin and paclitaxel in 31 patients with advanced cancers who had stopped responding to standard treatments.
An initial Phase I study carried out in patients with a range of advanced cancers showed the drug combination was safe. Side-effects were found to be generally mild, and consistent with chemotherapy alone.
Patients with head and neck cancers were found to have the best responses, so a Phase II expansion study at The Royal Marsden Hospital, London, and St James’s Hospital, Leeds, was therefore targeted to patients with these types of cancers. Cancers shrank for about one third of the patients who could be evaluated, and disease stabilised for a further third. For one patient, all signs of their cancer disappeared.
Lead author Dr Kevin Harrington described the response rates as “impressive” and recruitment to a Phase III trial has opened.
The study was published in Clinical Cancer Research
