New Study Shows Hope To Flush Prostate Cancer Cells Out

A study published in the journal Nature Medicine showed a genetically engineered version of the cold virus helped flushed dangerous prostate cancer cells out of hiding in mice, making them visible using positron emission tomography or PET scans, an advanced diagnostic equipment used to target and treat cancers on the cellular level.

Lily Wu of the University of California and her team tinkered with the common cold virus, deleted all of the parts of the cold virus that make people sick using genetic engineering, spliced in genes that make proteins that can be seen on PET scans, and then added in other genes that target prostate cancer cells in mice. When Wu and her team injected the engineered virus into tumors in mice with prostate cancer, PET scans picked up signals from lymph nodes with cancer cells in them. “It’s a prostate cancer-specific control switch,” Wu said.

Wu and her team researchers are working to develop a toxic agent they can add to kill the cancer cells at the same time. The team also plans to start testing the technique in dogs with prostate cancer. They are working to perfect the technique so that it can be tested in humans within the next two years, Lily Wu said.