Scientist cures her stage 3 cancer with viruses she grew in a lab – after refusing to undergo hellish chemo again

When Beata Halassy discovered that her stage 3 breast cancer had returned despite a mastectomy, she couldn’t bring herself to undergo another round of heavy chemotherapy.

The expert infectious disease researcher, now 53, decided to take matters into her own hands and used her decades of virology expertise to inject a virus directly into the tumor in her breast.

Despite possible side effects such as a blood clot in the lungs, loss of blood flow to the ovaries and fever, she used a measles virus and a pathogen that caused flu-like symptoms, which both attacked the tumor and caused a turbo-immune response to kill. cancer cells.

Miraculously, the tumor shrank without invading the pectoral muscle and skin, and she has been cancer-free for four years.

The treatment’s success raises ethical questions facing Dr. Halassy and other virus experts.

The problem is not so much that Dr. Halassy has chosen an unconventional treatment path.

The potential damage comes from publishing her brilliant results in the journal Vaccines which experts fear could lead to copycats without the right expertise.

She writes: ‘The short- and medium-term outcome of this unconventional treatment, which showed no significant toxicity, was undoubtedly favorable.’

Dr. Beata Halassy developed viruses in her laboratory that she injected directly into the tumor in her breast. The tumor shrank and separated from her pectoral muscle, making it easier for doctors to remove it

In the news Naturea study on Dr. Halassy’s treatment concludes that “self-medication with oncolytic viruses should not be the first approach when dealing with diagnosed cancer.”

Her last bout of breast cancer in 2020 was phase threewhich is considered advanced with a high chance of spreading to other parts of the body.

The experimental treatment she tried is called oncolytic virotherapy (OVT) and has been cancer-free for four years.

The experimental virus therapy that Dr. Halassy designed for herself in her laboratory at the University of Zagreb in Croatia is typically reserved for cancer patients who have tried several chemotherapy and radiation treatments and are running out of options.

Patients with advanced cancer often have a weaker immune system than healthy people, a result of chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

OVT directly destroys cancer cells and compensates for their weaker-than-normal immune response to cancer cells.

OVT is experimental, but the potential benefits outweigh the risks for many people.

It is not known how many people follow this medical route. Yet an estimated 623,405 have breast, prostate, lung, colorectal, melanoma or bladder cancer that has spread to other parts of the body and entered stage four or five. These people might benefit from OVT.

Federal health authorities have approved only one type of OVT, and it was created to treat metastatic melanoma. However, no treatment has yet been approved for breast cancer.

The request of Dr. Halassy is not approved for widespread use

After preparing the measles virus and the flu-like VSV virus in her laboratory, a colleague injected them directly into her tumor for two months.

Oncologists kept a close eye on her, ready in the wings to initiate a regiment of a commonly used anti-cancer drug (not chemotherapy) called trastuzumab if anything went wrong.

But they didn’t have to use it until those two months were up, a period when the viruses stimulated the immune system to destroy cancer cells.

Dr. Halassy said, “An immune response was definitely generated.”

The treatment shrunk the tumor and separated it from the pectoral muscle it was attached to, making it easier for doctors to remove it. She then continued with trastuzumab for about a year.

Dr. Halassy tried for years to get medical journals to publish her findings, but received rejection after rejection.

She said: ‘The biggest concern was always ethical issues.’

The three panels show that the tumor (measured by the two perpendicular lines) shrinks over time, making it easier to remove through surgery

Injecting the tumor directly with viruses caused a strong immune response that helped shrink the tumor. The immune system recognizes the virus-infected tumor cells as foreign and begins to attack them

Dr. Halassy had studied viruses for years. Although she is not an OVT specialist, her career growing and purifying viruses in her laboratory gave her the confidence to try it.

However, oncologists and other researchers say this approach is dangerous for the layperson with cancer, who may be more inclined to try an experimental treatment. Experts often agree on the idiom: “Don’t try this at home.”

Jacob Sherkow, a law and medicine researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who specializes in medical ethics, said he would have preferred to see a discussion of the ethical implications alongside the case report to provide more depth on the topic.

He added: “I think ultimately it falls within the line of ethics, but it’s not a slam-dunk case.”