AntiCancer lights up cancer cells with fluorescent virus

Working with scientists at Japan's Okayama University, San Diego-based AntiCancer has been working on a new technique that will make cancer cells fluorescent--making it easier for specialists to spot and remove them during surgery.

Scientists rigged a cold virus with a green fluorescent protein to devise the tagging technology, which it recently tested in mice. This particular virus--OBP-401--can only replicate in cells with activated telomerase, which is present in cancer cells. Once it is injected in a patient, it lights up the cancer cells with a fluorescent borrowed from jellyfish. AntiCancer President Robert Hoffman says that their approach is more effective than attaching a protein to the surface of cancer cells.

"The ability to selectively make cancer cells fluoresce in a living organism now enables all the cancer to be visualized, even cancer that is invisible under normal light," said Charlene M. Cooper, the COO of AntiCancer. "This enables the complete removal of all the cancer. If microscopic cancer still remains, the surgeon now has options: Either the remaining cancer can be better visualized and targeted using a surgical microscope or, since the cancer has been made genetically-fluorescent, any recurring cancer will still be fluorescent and will be able to be detected and removed subsequently."

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