A cure for cancer and virii?

Regarding virus:

"...researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory has designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection.

…In a paper published July 27 in the journal PLoS One, the researchers tested their drug against 15 viruses, and found it was effective against all of them — including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever."

Huh. It will be very interesting to see how future testing continues to play out. It could definitely be useful to those of us with borrowed immune systems.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/08/possible-progress-in-medicine.html

http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/10/1917232/New-Drug-Could-Cure-Nearly-Any-Viral-Infection


Regarding cancer:

This is a fascinating study. Researchers injected three humans who have chroniclymphocytic leukemia with a new drug. One of the subjects was told that he only had weeks to live. The results? "...made the most common type of leukemia completely disappear in two of the patients and reduced it by 70 percent in the third. In each of the patients as much as five pounds of cancerous tissue completely melted away in a few weeks, and a year later it is still gone."

The side effects of the treatment were fever, aches and pains: basically the same thing that people go through when fighting any infection. The drug is "a modified, harmless version of HIV ... they inserted a series of genes into the white blood cells. These were designed to make to cells target and kill the cancer cells. After growing a large batch of the genetically engineered white blood cells, the doctors injected them back into the patients."

The researchers weren't able to get any funding from pharmacy because it was such a strange approach, but they were able to get enough funding to try it out on three people, and hopefully the results will get them more funding for more tests.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44090512/

http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/11/1458205/Cancer-Cured-By-HIV