A recent article in Cancer Monthly points to the fact that virotherapy – the process of engineering viruses so that they replicate only in tumor cells and kill only tumor cells – may be a viable option in treating mesothelioma and other cancers. These findings were reported in a recently published study written by David T. Curiel, MD, PhD, director of the Division of Human Gene Therapy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

“Not much is known about the biology of mesothelioma,” Curiel says, so it was an important step forward when his team – led by Zeng B. Zhu, MD – identified a new tumor specific promoter (TSP) called survivin and confirmed its relationship to mesothelioma with laboratory and animal studies. (All studies were supported by the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation.)

“This discovery set the stage for the team to design a virotherapy agent effective against mesothelioma – a disease that has not seen an improvement in outcomes resulting from new therapies in 20 years,” Curiel noted. Now the researchers have engineered a virus that replicates in mesothelioma cells and spares normal cells.

“Mesothelioma is typically localized in the chest cavity, and virotherapy can optimize our ability to target and contain it,” he says. “We can concentrate the virus in the area where it will be most effective – and cause minimal damage to healthy cells.”

University of Alabama researchers have also adapted an early diagnostic test for the disease, points out Curiel. He hopes that the test and the potential new therapy will begin to address the growing number of cases of mesothelioma so that those with this aggressive form of cancer have more options in the near future.

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