Good morning all
Hot on the heels of the Estrella conference presentation on OnCARlytics in combo with Artemis - Prof Yuman Fong and his team have just published a new article in the journal of "Molecular Cancer Therapeutics." - a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Co-authors include Yanghee Woo and Suzanne Warner from City of Hope, plus Nick Eade from Imugene.
The article details in vitro and mouse model studies of CF33 used against Liver Cancer as a monotherapy - both through direct injection to the tumour and through IV administration (ie into the bloodstream). The study had two purposes:
1. To test the effectiveness of the PET imaging of the hNIS gene in CF33 - which enables researchers to actually see where the virus is replicating in an animal (or human). This allows researchers to check that the CF33 is actually finding and attacking tumours.
2. To test the effectiveness of CF33 in killing Liver Cancer cells.
In both respects the study seems to have been a huge success. The PET imaging in mice clearly showed CF33 in the liver cancer tumours. This worked for all mice where the cancer was directly injected, but it also worked for all mice where the CF33 was just injected into the bloodstream. It took 48 hours longer that way - but the CF33 found the virus, and infected it, and could be seen on PET imaging.
This is another strong indication that CF33 will be effective as an IV administered drug - which is fabulous, because some cancers locations cannot be directly injected. In fact - this makes it likely that CF33 could find metastatic tumours anywhere in the body - even those which have not yet been detected on scans.
Therapeutic effect:
CF33 effectively killed Liver Cancer in vitro (which the already knew from the early preclinical studies).
However it also showed very strong cancer killing therapeutic effect in the mice. All mice in the control group were dead by day 34. All mice in the IV CF33 treated mice were still alive when the study ended at Day 60. Only one of the direct injection CF33 treated mice died (and it was noted that the tumour in that mouse was significantly larger at the outset).
Additional evidence - when euthanised mice were studied, it was clear that the areas of necrosis (cell death) in the tumours coincided with the locations where CF33 was observed through PET scanning.
So - read it for yourself if you are interested. The link to the Abstract is below. The web page for the Abstract allows you to download the whole article as a PDF.
https://aacrjournals.org/mct/article/doi/10.1158/1535-7163.MCT-22-0635/726465/An-oncolytic-poxvirus-encoding-hNIS-shows-antiHappy Friday to all - trolls included.
Cheers
Dave
(20min delay)