“Doctors Try Genetically Modified Poliovirus As Experimental Brain Cancer Treatment” by Rob Stein

Daring to be different…

[Link to the full NPR story here]

Part of queering anything, science education or otherwise, is to think the unthinkable. Sometimes, daring to be different can lead to unusual proposals for treatment of diseases, but it is this type of “out of the box” thinking that leads to innovation and breakthroughs.

A short excerpt from the article:

A genetically modified poliovirus may help some patients fight a deadly form of brain cancer, researchers report. The experimental treatment seems to have extended survival in a small group of patients with glioblastoma who faced a grim prognosis because standard treatments had failed, Duke University researchers say… But the researchers and other brain-cancer doctors caution the research is at a very early stage. In the study, only 21 percent of patients experienced a prolonged survival. Much more follow-up research is needed to better assess and hopefully improve the treatment's effectiveness, the researchers say.

Here is another recent example of “fighting disease with disease”—this time using engineered herpesvirus to to fight cancer cells via a provoked immune response (i.e. immunotherapy): Link to Nature journal article

Here is yet another example of how “failure” or one’s misfortune with one disease can open up new possibilities for another disease: Link to ScienceDaily article about harnessing the toxicity of small interfering RNA sequences in the gene “huntingtin” (responsible for Huntington’s Disease) to fight cancer cells.

Other “Queer Science” Creations to Ponder…

• Stool transplants

• Bacteria in yogurt

• Kombucha

• Charcoal masks