Leeds scientists find way to boost drugs used in cancer battle

A new drug called RT3D, or Reolysin, is based on a virus that is found in the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts of most adults without causing any symptoms.

RT3D has the ability to grow in and kill certain types of cancer cells, but does not grow in normal cells.

Previous trials injecting patients with the virus on its own showed limited effectiveness, but in clinical trials researchers found that RT3D appeared to magnify the effects of platin and taxane-based chemotherapy on tumour cells.

Dr Kevin Harrington and colleagues in Leeds started a clinical trial testing intravenous RT3D in combination with chemotherapy drugs carboplatin and paclitaxel in 31 patients with advanced cancers who had stopped responding to standard treatments.

An initial study was carried out in patients with a range of advanced cancers, which 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 second study at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London, and St James’s Hospital, Leeds, was targeted at 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 cancer disappeared.

Dr Harrington said: “We saw really very impressive response rates in these patients. These are patients whose cancers had grown despite a great deal of previous treatment, including platinum-based chemotherapy for many.

“Under those circumstances, we’d expect that the average response rate to chemotherapy alone might be as low as single- digit figures and the average survival would be somewhere between three and four months. In our Phase I/II study we show this had been prolonged to an average of seven months, albeit not in a randomised trial.

“We’ve now started recruiting patients with advanced head and neck cancer to a randomised Phase III trial, in which all patients will receive chemotherapy and half will receive Reolysin as well.

“We are extremely excited about this progress.”

The study also found the virus was not shed after treatment. This means people could be given the drug as outpatients as no risk was found that they could transmit the virus to others.

Head and neck cancers include tumours of the eye, nasal cavity, tongue, gums, lip, cheeks, voice box and oesophagus.