A researcher cured herself of cancer with viruses she grew herself in the laboratory. Several specialized magazines refused to publish his study, and experts say what is wrong with this test – HotNews.ro

A researcher has successfully treated breast cancer using a technique she developed herself based on two viruses she created in the laboratory. But several scientific journals refused to publish his research because of the controversy it caused, reports the group. ANSAcalled by Radar.

Psychologist Beata Halassy from the University of Zagreb took this “unconventional” path, as she describes herself, presenting her case in a study that was recently published in the journal. Vaccination and says that one’s own experience is “something that cannot be narrated.”

The result, which the magazine also talks about at length Nature on his website, encouraging an ethical debate about self-examination.

Halassy discovered in 2020, when she was 49, that a new tumor had formed in the same place where she had previously undergone a mastectomy. Despite this relapse, the second one, she did not feel able to face chemotherapy again, but she did not give up.

She decided to take matters into her own hands and began to study scientific literature, using her skills as an anthropologist. So he developed a treatment for his condition that is just beginning to be tested today, called oncolytic virotherapy. It happened four years ago and since then the tumor has not returned.

The researcher injected two viruses into her cancerous tumor

Oncolytic virotherapy (OVT) is an emerging field that uses viruses to both attack tumor cells and stimulate the immune system to attack the tumor. The clinical trials to date are based on this method, which was first performed on tumors with metastases, now also considering early tumor stages.

One of these clinical trials, for example, is currently underway in the United States on cases of melanoma. In contrast, there are no tests for breast cancer.

Halassy says she was determined to try the procedure herself simply because of her expertise in virology. The Croatian researcher decided to spread two viruses against her tumor, one after the other: the measles virus and one of the vesicular stomatitis viruses, which she had worked on in the past and both were used in the tests then launched.

The drug was injected directly into the tumor for two months, during which the oncologists constantly monitored the situation to intervene with chemotherapy if things did not go well. The tumor gradually shrunk without major side effects until surgical removal was possible.

Later, the researcher was treated for a year with a monoclonal antibody.

Analysis of tumor tissue, infiltrated with immune cells called lymphocytes, showed that the treatment worked successfully.

Stephen Russell, an OVT specialist who runs the virotherapy biotech company Vyriad in Rochester, Minn., agrees that Halassy’s case suggests that the viral injections worked to kill her tumor. reduce and cause the aggressive margins to shrink.

But he doesn’t think her experience is truly groundbreaking, as researchers are already trying to use OVT to help treat early-stage cancer. He is not aware of anyone who tried two viruses in a row, but says it is not possible to know whether that was significant in a single-case study.

“Actually, the novelty here is that she made it herself with a virus that she grew in her own laboratory,” he says.

The issue is controversial because of self-examination

Halassy says she felt a responsibility to publish her results. But she was rejected by more than 12 specialized journals, even though she wrote the paper with colleagues. The Croatian pathologist says the study was rejected mostly because she was experimenting on herself.

Jacob Sherkow, a medical law expert at the University of Urbana-Champaign in Illinois, told the journal Nature that Halassy was not surprised.

He says the problem isn’t so much that Halassy tested herself, but that publishing her results could encourage others to reject medical treatments and try something similar.

And cancer patients may be particularly prone to trying treatments that have not been proven to work. But even Sherkov says that it is important for the scientific community to ensure that the results obtained from such experiments are not lost.

Despite the controversy, the Croatian researcher says that she does not regret the choice made and believes that it is unlikely that anyone will try to imitate her, since the treatment which she found in her laboratory required a lot of scientific training.

He has now received funding to test his cancer treatment in pets.