“An Unconventional Case Study of Neoadjuvant Oncolytic Virotherapy for Recurrent Breast Cancer”, 2024-08-23 (; similar):
Intratumoural oncolytic virotherapy may have promise as a means to debulk and downstage inoperable tumours in preparation for successful surgery. Here, we describe the unique case of a 50-year-old self-experimenting female virologist with locally recurrent muscle-invasive breast cancer who was able to proceed to simple, non-invasive tumour resection after receiving multiple intratumoural injections of research-grade virus preparations, which first included an Edmonston-Zagreb measles vaccine strain (MeV) and then a vesicular stomatitis virus Indiana strain (VSV), both prepared in her own laboratory.
The intratumoural virus therapy was well tolerated. Frequent imaging studies and regular clinical observations documenting size, consistency, and mobility of the injected tumour demonstrate that both the MeV & VSV-containing parts of the protocol contributed to the overall favourable response.
Two months after the start of the virus injections, the shrunken tumour was no longer invading the skin or underlying muscle and was surgically excised. The excised tumour showed strong lymphocytic infiltration, with an increase in CD20-positive B cells, CD8-positive T cells, and macrophages. PD-L1 expression was detected in contrast to the baseline PD-L1-negative phenotype.
The patient completed one-year trastuzumab adjuvant therapy and remains well and recurrence-free 45 months post-surgery. Although an isolated case, it encourages consideration of oncolytic virotherapy as a neoadjuvant treatment modality.
…Institutional Review Board Statement: This is a case of self-experimentation. As such, it does not require ethics committee review33, 34, 35. The study was feasible only due to the unique situation in which the patient was also an expert virologist. The patient was fully aware of her illness as well as of available therapies, and as a scientist in the field of virology, she was aware of the potential of oncolytic virotherapy. After two recurrences of the same tumour, she wanted to try an innovative approach in a scientifically sound way. Her oncologists (the leading oncologists in Croatia for breast cancer) accepted to monitor the progress of the treatment, primarily with the aim of discontinuing the injections and intervening with conventional therapy if there were untoward effects or if the tumour progressed.
[Twitter author comments: “It was a 2.5-year battle with different reviewers and editors from 13 different journals. The principal reason for all these rejections was the concern on ethical issues. I am very glad that we finally succeeded. I hope it will encourage all of you, who work in the field, to try your developmental therapies in the earlier stages of the cancer. I think that a patient’s immune system has to be potent for the virotherapy to succeed.”]