治疗脑肿瘤有突破 新方法获FDA高度肯定

一种能杀死恶性脑肿瘤的大胆试验已获FDA肯定。早期阶段测试的结果已非常显著，FDA希望快速跟踪治疗，尽快推向市场。...





一种能杀死恶性脑肿瘤的大胆试验已获FDA肯定。早期阶段测试的结果已非常显著，FDA希望快速跟踪治疗，尽快推向市场。

该疗法使用脊髓灰质炎病毒攻击胶质母细胞瘤。在过去几年临床试验中，已有患者取得良好疗效。



其中一例患者Stephanie Lipscomb。 2011年她还是一个20岁的护校学生，因为头痛去检查，医生告诉她，她有一个网球大小的胶质母细胞瘤，生命仅能维持几个月。

她不得不切除98％的肿瘤。然而在2012年，医生告诉她癌细胞又出现了。

复发性胶质母细胞瘤，除了这个从未尝试过的治疗方法外，没有任何治疗选择——于是Lipscomb成为杜克大学脊髓灰质炎病毒试验的第一个志愿者。

分子生物学家Matthias Gromeier重组了脊髓灰质炎病毒，删除一个关键的基因序列。这样的病毒无法生存，Gromeier利用无害的感冒病毒修复了损害部分。这种新型改良脊髓灰质炎病毒不能引起麻痹或死亡，因为它不能在正常细胞中繁殖。

但它可以在癌细胞中繁殖，并且在复制过程中释放出毒素毒害癌细胞。这个过程也唤醒免疫系统对抗之前从没注意到的癌症。

为什么之前免疫系统不能对癌症做出反应？——

“所有人类的癌症都进化出保护罩或保护措施，免疫系统是看不见它们的”Gromeier解释到。“我们尝试用我们的病毒扭转这种情况。因此，通过感染肿瘤，我们实际上是在解除癌细胞的保护罩，使免疫系统能攻击进来。”

于是出现了脊髓灰质炎病毒开始了对癌细胞杀戮，但大部分的伤害还是免疫系统做的。Stephanie Lipscomb的肿瘤逐渐缩小直到21个月后消失。输液三年后，不可思议的事情发生了，后来的核磁共振检查显示已没有活性癌细胞。

来源：CBS

Promising brain cancer trial given breakthrough status by FDA

A bold experiment to kill a vicious form of brain cancer has been granted breakthrough status by the Food and Drug Administration. Results in the earliest stage of testing have been so remarkable, the FDA wants to fast track the treatment to speed it to market.

The therapy uses the polio virus to attack glioblastoma. "60 Minutes" has been following patients in the clinical trial for the last two years.

One of those patients was Stephanie Lipscomb. In 2011, Lipscomb was a 20-year-old nursing student with headaches. A doctor told her she had a glioblastoma tumor the size of a tennis ball and that she had months to live.

She had 98 percent of the tumor removed. Then in 2012, the doctors told her the cancer had come back.

With recurrent glioblastoma, there were no options except the one that had never been tried. Lipscomb became the first volunteer for Duke University's experiment with the polio virus.

The virus is the creation of -- or, the obsession of -- molecular biologist Matthias Gromeier.

Gromeier re-engineered the virus, removing a key genetic sequence. The virus can't survive this way, so he repaired the damage with a harmless bit of cold virus. This new modified polio virus can't cause paralysis or death because it can't reproduce in normal cells.

But it can reproduce in cancer cells, and in the process of replicating, it releases toxins that poison the cell. This process also awakens the immune system to the cancer it never noticed before.

"Why didn't the immune system react to the cancer to begin with," CBS News' Scott Pelley asked Gromeier.

"All human cancers, they develop a shield or shroud of protective measures that make them invisible to the immune system," Gromeier explained. "This is precisely what we try to reverse with our virus. So by infecting the tumor, we are actually removing this protective shield. And enabling the immune system to come in and attack."

It appears the polio starts the killing, but the immune system does most of the damage. Stephanie Lipscomb's tumor shrank for 21 months until it was gone. Three years after the infusion, something unimaginable had happened.

An MRI in August of 2014 showed no active cancer cells at all.

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