When Alexander Fleming used penicillin from a fungus to fight bacterial infections, he knew he was onto something that would revolutionize the world of medicine. Now, a modern-day “Fleming” is utilizing the same theory to develop a cure for ovarian cancer, according to an online article in Women’s Health Research at Yale.
Ovarian cancer has occupied the headlines recently when a jury found in favor of a woman who claimed talcum powder had caused her cancer.
Ovarian cancer is known to affect more than 22,000 women in the US each year. The type of cancer and stage of the disease generally determine treatment choices. The main treatment options are surgery, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, targeted therapy, and/or radiation therapy.
If Dr. Anthony van den Pol has anything to do with it, women will not need to worry about choosing a treatment for their ovarian cancer any longer. He believes he has found a cure for ovarian cancer.
Van den Pol has been introducing another deadly disease, the Lassa virus, to attack the cancer cells that make up ovarian cancer. The Lassa virus is a contagious virus that causes headaches, muscle pain, facial swelling, hearing loss, and possibly, death. Lassa is well known in West Africa, but van den Pol is using this deadly virus for good.
By altering the Lassa virus to a safe version, without fear of causing infections, van den Pol introduces the virus to infect the cancer cells. The cancer cells, in turn, can’t defend themselves against Lassa and die. The theory has already been successfully tested on mice, and van den Pol is hoping to secure funding to make certain the “new” virus is safe to be tested in humans.
