Clinical trial to test effectiveness of Pexa-Vec on liver cancer

A clinical trial is testing how well Paxa-Vec could act on liver cancer.

A clinical trial is underway to examine the effects of Pexa-Vec on the hepatocellular carcinoma form of liver cancer.
The team at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, administered Pexa- Vec - a genetically engineered virus that is used in the smallpox vaccine - both intravenously and injected directly into the tumor during the 18-week trial.
As the study explained, patients involved in the clinical trial have been found to be unresponsive to sorafenib, which is the only systematic therapy currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
"The goal of the trial is to evaluate if Pexa-Vec can extend patients' survival through its ability to selectively target and kill cancer cells, cut off the tumor's blood supply, and activate the body's own immune system to fight the cancer," said professor of medicine Tony Reid.
Pexa-Vec is derived from vaccinia virus and is similar to smallpox, with the virus selected for the study because of its ability to target cancerous tissues.