Recently, British Journal of Hematology, a leading medical journal, reported a miraculous case: After a terminal cancer patient was infected with the new coronavirus, the tumor disappeared…
A 61-year-old man stumbled across terminal cancer:
He was a patient with kidney failure and was on hemodialysis. In 2020, he suffered from swollen lymph nodes and lost weight, which led to his admission to the hospital, where he was finally diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma.
This is a rare lymphoma, accounting for only 8% to 11% of all lymphomas, but with a high cure rate, with a 5-year survival rate of 75%[1].
After being diagnosed with cancer, more unfortunate things came.
He was tested for COVID-19 due to breathing difficulties and wheezing, and the results were positive. He has become a new coronary pneumonia patient again! He received supportive treatment in the hospital (such as oxygen inhalation, rest, supplemental nutrition, etc.), and after 11 days of hospitalization, he went home to recuperate.
After 4 months, a miracle happened!
Doctors found that the tumor in his body was actually receding!
——The palpable lymph nodes are getting smaller;
——PET-CT scan found that the lymph nodes in the body were also regressing (see the before and after comparison picture below);
—The amount of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV infection is thought to be associated with lymphoma) is also decreasing.
So here comes the question-
In this case, there are two possibilities for tumor regression after infection with the new coronavirus-
1. Magical immune response
This is also the reason why the authors of the paper speculate: after the new coronavirus enters the body, the patient’s immune system is activated, killing the virus and killing tumor cells in the body at the same time.
This is not the first time that this phenomenon has been discovered. There have been similar cases before: a patient with lymphoma [2] infected with the new coronavirus, and the tumor in his body also disappeared.
Image source: Zhanku Hailuo
This method of mobilizing the immune system to destroy tumors is called immunotherapy, and it has mature clinical applications.
The earliest use of similar methods was Dr. William Kohler, who is known as the “father of tumor immunotherapy”[3]:
In 1891, he injected Streptococcus into an inoperable cancer patient and his condition improved. He tried a similar approach in two patients with osteosarcoma, and although the tumors shrank, the patients died of the infection.
Considering the dangers of injecting live Streptococcus, he used inactivated Streptococcus mixed with another bacterium to make “Coley toxin.” Over the next 40 years, Coley injected more than a thousand cancer patients with the toxin, all reporting excellent results, especially for bone and soft tissue sarcomas.
Because Coley did not know the reason at the time, and did not make a standard method of using Coley toxin, many doctors used this method to treat it but did not achieve what he claimed. effect, and does not endorse his results.
Today, we stimulate the immune system of cancer patients with safer and more specific foreign agents—
Therapeutic cancer vaccines use certain proteins of tumor cells to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies or immune cells that recognize tumor cells with these proteins.
Direct recruitment to the immune system, i.e. injecting antibodies/immune cells into the body. For example, CAR-T cell therapy (immune T cells are cultured in vitro and then injected into the patient to kill tumor cells) and PD-1 monoclonal antibodies.
2. The new coronavirus may be an oncolytic virus
The second possible reason is that the new coronavirus directly harms tumor cells and is an oncolytic virus.
We know that viruses cannot survive on their own. After infecting the human body, it must enter human cells and produce offspring. This process causes cells to burst.
If a virus infects the human body, it can enter tumor cells, thereby killing tumor cells, but has no effect on normal cells, then the virus has anti-tumor effect. called “oncolytic virus”.
Drugs developed using oncolytic viruses are called oncolytic viruses, which are a hot topic in the field of tumor therapy.
The earliestThe reported case is of a woman in 1896 who went into remission of leukemia after a suspected flu infection [4].
Hepatitis virus was the first virus used in cancer treatment. In the 1949 clinical trial of hepatitis B virus treatment of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, 60% of the subjects were infected with hepatitis B, but the tumor treatment effect lasted only 1 week, and some people died [4].
In the 1970s and 1980s, clinical trials of oncolytic viruses all but stalled due to safety, efficacy, and regulatory concerns [4].
Finally, genetic engineering has rescued this technology, which can eliminate the pathogenicity of natural viruses, improve targeting, reduce the killing of normal cells, and target tumor cells [4].
China approved the first oncolytic virus therapy in 2005, using the transgenic adenovirus H101 to treat head and neck cancer [5].
Oncolytic virotherapy was approved in the United States in 2015, using an attenuated herpes simplex virus to treat melanoma [6].
Reading this, many people will ask, after the new coronavirus infection, the tumor disappears in the body, can cancer patients deliberately infect and fight with poison?
Not so!
Image source: Zhanku Hailuo
Direct infection with a natural virus has a high probability of making cancer patients suffer from infectious diseases at the same time, and even die from the infection.
The greatest value of this case is for the reference of the scientific research community, but it has no clinical significance, nor is it worth promoting to other patients.
In the face of the new coronavirus, cancer patients need to pay more attention. Many previous studies have shown that patients with underlying diseases have a higher mortality rate after infection with the new crown. In addition, domestic vaccines are not recommended for patients with malignant tumors for the time being.
Reviewer: Luo Tianming| Postdoc, Peking University School of Basic Medicine
Contributing Author: Jiang Yongyuan| Master of Internal Medicine, Third Military Medical University
References
[1]Ge Junbo, Xu Yongjian, Wang Chen. Internal Medicine (9th Edition). Beijing: People’s Health Publishing House. 2018.
[2]Challenor S, Tucker D. SARS-CoV-2-induced remission of Hodgkin lymphoma. Br J Haematol. 2021. published on line.
[3]McCarthy EF. The toxins of William B. Coley and the treatment of bone and soft-tissue sarcomas. Iowa Orthop J. 2006;26:154-158.
[4]Kelly E, Russell SJ. History of oncolytic viruses: genesis to genetic engineering. Mol Ther. 2007;15(4):651-659.
[5]K Garber. China approves world’s first oncolytic virus therapy for cancer treatment. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2006;98(5):298-300.
[6]FDA.HIGHLIGHTS OF PRESCRIBING INFORMATION.
https:https://www.fda.gov/media/94129/download
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