Support for Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) vaccine has come from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York. Kyo Young Song and five colleagues in the Department of Surgery have reported on highly positive effects of the vaccine in an experimental system (Song 2010). The authors state: “Oncolytic therapy using viruses is a promising form of cancer therapy.” They state that this form of treatment “has become particularly attractive with improvements in techniques for manipulating RNA viruses to genetically modify these viruses into highly potent and tumor-specific vectors.” And, indeed, the form of NDV employed at the Sloan-Kettering lab was a bioengineered one.
The mouse model they used in this experiment was of metastases from stomach cancer, a huge problem around the world, where this kind of cancer is a major cause of death.
The authors reiterate the fact that NDV is attractive as a treatment because, while it causes a serious disease in poultry, it is virtually harmless in humans. It causes only flu-like symptoms and/or conjunctivitis (pink eye). The authors note that NDV has been seen to destroy cancers since 1995 and credit Laszlo Csatary, MD, of Alexandria, VA, with first identifying the cancer-killing properties of NDV. In the past, Csatary has often been denied his priority in this regard (Csatary 2000). They correctly identify NDV as “a safe and effective anticancer therapeutic agent.”
In the present experiment, 20 mice without functioning immune systems were injected with human gastric cancer cells. Viral treatment was then given to 15 of the mice either as a single treatment or as multiple treatments after the implantation of the cancer. In most cases, 52 days after the implantation of the tumor the animals were sacrificed and their abdominal organs were removed in one piece (en bloc) for anaylsis.
The results were dramatic. While all the control animals developed innumerable tumor nodules in the peritoneal cavity, as large as 3.5 centimeters, there was no gross tumor in 6 (or 40 percent) of the NDV-treated mice and in 50 percent of the multiple treatment group. Even in the animals that were treated but still developed tumors, the Sloan-Kettering authors report that “the nodules were significantly smaller, the largest being 1.5 centimeters” (Song 2010). The presence of NDV in tumor specimens of these treated animals was subsequently confirmed by immunofluorescence staining.
I first learned about NDV on a trip to Hungary 20 years ago. Upon my return, I contacted Dr. Laszlo Csatary, and his wife, Eva, and wrote about them in my book, Cancer Therapy
–Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.
Cancer Decisions
References:
Song KY, Wong J, Gonzalez L, et al. Antitumor efficacy of viral therapy using genetically engineered Newcastle disease virus [NDV(F3aa)-GFP] for peritoneally disseminated gastric cancer. J. Mol. Med. 2010;88(6):589-596.
Csatary LK, Gosztonyi G, Szeberenyi J, et al. MTH-68/H oncolytic viral treatment in human high-grade gliomas. J. Neurooncol. 2004;67(1-2):83-93.
Csatary LK, Csatary E, Moss RW. Re: Scientific interest in newcastle disease virus is reviving. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2000 Mar 15;92(6):493-4.
Csatary LK, Moss RW, Beuth J, Töröcsik B, Szeberenyi J, Bakacs T. Beneficial treatment of patients with advanced cancer using a Newcastle disease virus vaccine (MTH-68/H). Anticancer Res. 1999 Jan-Feb;19(1B):635-8.
Schulze T, Kemmner W, Weitz J, et al. Efficiency of adjuvant active specific immunization with Newcastle disease virus modified tumor cells in colorectal cancer patients following resection of liver metastases: results of a prospective randomized trial. Cancer Immunol. Immunother. 2009;58(1):61-69.
Wagner S, Csatary CM, Gosztonyi G, et al. Combined treatment of pediatric high-grade glioma with the oncolytic viral strain MTH-68/H and oral valproic acid. APMIS. 2006;114(10):731-743.
