The Common Cold--and Cancer

I have a cold. I gargled with salt water. I guess it made me feel better and my sore throat did go away the next day, but now I am suffering from other symptoms. Most colds are caused by rhinoviruses which grow best inside humans’ noses because the temperature is just right (around 91°F). The NIH says that adults have on average 2 to 4 colds per year although, of course, the range really fluctuates a lot from person to person. Most colds won’t last more than a week in patients with healthy immune systems. So if all goes well I should be better by Friday!

I found out something really interesting yesterday: Dr. Leonard Seymour and other researchers at Oxford University in England are developing a new cancer drug—the common cold. It turns out that cold viruses can destroy cancer cells that are drug-resistant. Essentially, because cancer suppresses the immune system at the site of tumor growth, a common cold virus can easily destroy cancer cells. The main problem in vivo is that let’s say you inject the cold virus into the blood stream to be propagated throughout the body and reach the tumor. As you can imagine, the virus will never make it to the cancer cells—your immune system will attack it before it ever gets there. Dr. Seymour’s research involves attaching a polymer coating around the virus that would protect it from the immune system until it reaches the cancerous cells.

Here’s a link to a review article from the researchers at Oxford published in Nature: http://www.nature.com/cgt/journal/v9/n12/pdf/7700541a.pdf

News article about Dr. Seymour’s research:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1987505,00.html

NIH Information about colds: http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/healthscience/healthtopics/colds/default.htm