A common virus could help fight liver cancer and hepatitis C

A promising new immunotherapy to treat liver cancer has been discovered.

Reovirus, a common virus that causes mild cases of respiratory infection, mainly in children, could be harnessed as an immunotherapy to fight primary liver cancer and hepatitis C. Viruses cause around 20% of all human cancer. While only a handful are known to be tumour-promoting, this is a particular problem for liver cancer, where around three-quarters of cases are caused by either hepatitis C virus (HCV) or hepatitis B virus (HBV). These cause long-lived infections within the liver that in some people eventually give rise to tumours. But in our latest study, we show that our immune systems can be coerced into targeting both the tumour and the underlying HCV infection that is driving it to grow. We persuaded the immune system to target both the tumour and the underlying HCV infection by administering a benign virus – reovirus – as an immunotherapy. Mice with liver cancer caused by hepatitis C responded well to this therapy. The therapy could also be extended to other virus-driven malignancies, including Epstein Barr virus blood cancers.