Virus treatment in advanced cancer.A pathological study of fifty-seven cases

HE F i N D i N c s at autopsy in filiy-seven cases T of advanced neoplastic disease treated with one or more viruses (Table 1) form the basis of the present report.In addition, twenty-three of these fifty-seven patients had a total of seventy-seven biopsies (Tables 2 and 3) that were studied and compared with material obtained postmortem for evidence of morphological change attributable to virus inoculation.T h e experimental basis and rationale that led to human experimental virus inoculation in advanced neoplastic disease and the clinical course of human infection following the injection of certain viruses have been reported else-T h e criteria for the choice of a virus for clinikal trial as an antineoplastic agent have been stated: "A virus should be oncolytic in some host and infective but of low virulence in man.""These requirements were presumably met by each of the viruses studied, since all showed oncolytic activity in some animal and none of the viruses described here, with the exception of mumps and vaccinia virus, were known to cause severe clinical disease in man.where.21, 22. 23 VIRUSESWest Nile virus was first isolated19 from the blood of an Ugandian native whose only sign of illness was slight fever.Three viruses that From the Pathology Laboratories of Memorial Hospital and the Division of Experimental Pathology of Sloan-Kettering Institute, Memorial Center for Cancer and Allied Diseases, New York, New York.