Loading
A virus sold for years as a cancer treatment in Latvia was sequenced and tested against ordinary strains of the same virus, and it killed cancer cells no better, and infected healthy cells too.
Rigvir was a cell-adapted enterovirus derived from an echovirus 7 isolate, registered in Latvia and promoted internationally as an oncolytic virotherapy, particularly for melanoma. Hietanen and colleagues sequenced Rigvir and five other echovirus 7 isolates, analysed the genomes, and ran cell infectivity assays on eight cell lines including both cancer and non-cancer lines.
Phylogenetically Rigvir sat in its own clade at the root, most distant from the other isolates, and carried nine unique capsid mutations, six of them at surface-exposed residues, one at the contact interface with decay-accelerating factor. Functionally, the infectivity assays showed no discernible difference in oncolytic effect between Rigvir, the Wallace prototype and four other echovirus 7 isolates, and Rigvir also infected non-cancer cell lines. The authors conclude that the claim of Rigvir being an effective treatment against multiple cancers is not warranted by the evidence presented, and that neither the bioinformatics nor the cell work reveals a mechanism.
Rigvir is the field's clearest case of a product sold far ahead of its evidence: a national registration, international marketing to patients, and no randomised trial. This is the laboratory work that should have been done first. It is here because a field that produces striking single cases attracts exactly this, and readers deserve to know that an approval somewhere in the world is not the same as evidence.
Shares Oncolytic viruses, Melanoma.
Shares Oncolytic viruses, Melanoma.
Shares Oncolytic viruses, Melanoma.
Shares Oncolytic viruses, Melanoma.
Shares Oncolytic viruses, Melanoma.
Shares Oncolytic viruses, Melanoma.
Shares Oncolytic viruses, Melanoma.
Shares Oncolytic viruses, Melanoma.