Cancer-killing treatment using a common cold virus offers hope to patients with inoperable tumors - Daily Mail

The clinical trial utilized live coxsackievirus, one of the many viruses that can cause a common cold, in combination with pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug known as pembro or Keytruda.

The clinical trial utilized live coxsackievirus (above), one of the many viruses that can cause a common cold, in combination with pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug.

Mehnert cautioned that further testing, which is already underway, would have to prove successful before the combination treatment could become a 'standard of care,' or go-to therapy, for patients with advanced melanoma, meaning melanoma that has spread to other parts of the body.

She added that the next phase of clinical trials will involve patients with melanoma that has become widespread, as well as in patients whose tumors, if shrunken by the drug combination, could be more easily removed by surgery

For example, patients who responded best to the combined treatment had fewer of the chemical receptors (PDL1) on the surfaces of cancer cells that are blocked by pembrolizumab than patients who did not respond as well

The volunteers in the latest study were mostly seniors, who enrolled at three cancer clinics, including Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Gabrail Cancer Center in Canton, Ohio and John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, California