Cancer treatments can sound as dangerous as the disease itself.
Standard therapies tend to swipe at cells almost indiscriminately, damaging healthy tissue while killing tumors. The lack of specificity can mean even more misery to an already suffering patient. As candidates for the anticancer toolkit, viruses may seem to belong to the same therapeutic category as poison and radiation. Researchers, however, have new strategies to make viruses into a more compliant instrument. The idea of using viruses as anticancer agents isn't new.