Therapy
technology : therapy
A New Approach To Cancer Therapy
The challenge of cancer therapy today
Despite recent advances in conventional cancer therapy and diagnosis as well as in standard and palliative care, cancer remains one of the largest public health problems worldwide. There is an urgent need, not only for new cancer drugs, but also for an entirely new approach to therapy.
In some cancers, today’s available therapies have proven effective at eradicating disease altogether; yet in many less responsive cancers, survival rates remain low. Today’s standard therapies deliver chemotherapeutic agents or radiation to the body in an effort to inhibit tumor growth and ultimately eliminate cancer. With today’s therapies, it is difficult, if not impossible, to kill tumor cells selectively without compromising patients’ immune systems and causing a range of serious side effects.
Changing the way we treat cancer
The Genelux technology represents a complete paradigm shift away from current chemotherapeutic and radiotherapy-based cancer treatments. Genelux has pioneered a new therapeutic and diagnostic product platform utilizing an attenuated vaccinia virus to specifically locate, enter and destroy solid tumors and distant metastases without harming healthy tissues and organs.
At the core of the Genelux technology is a virus-driven "micro-pharmaceutical factory™" that forms inside the tumor and continually "manufactures" therapeutic and diagnostic compounds directly at the site. Based on preclinical data, these beneficial compounds have the potential to overtake and kill tumor cells until the entire tumor is destroyed. Since the virus amplifies selectively within the tumor only to levels sufficient to cause tumor regression and ultimately elimination, it is far less likely than conventional therapies to cause harm to the rest of the body.
As the virus replicates within tumor cells, it also produces copies of built-in diagnostic proteins. One of these proteins, the luciferase-GFP fusion protein, enables non-invasive, real-time optical imaging of tumors for the purposes of diagnosis, staging and microscopic analysis.
In addition to direct lysis (killing) of tumor cells, the Genelux technology also harnesses the body’s innate and adaptive immune responses to fight the cancer. In fact, there is preclinical evidence that this process can “train” the body’s immune system to inhibit the formation of future tumors.
GL-ONC1 is currently being studied in an early phase clinical trial in human cancer patients in the United Kingdom. Additional clinical trials are in final regulatory preparation stages and expected to begin in the very near future.