EDITORIAL Viruses as Oncolytic Agents: a New Age for "Therapeutic " Viruses?

Since the discovery of microbial organisms, scientists have speculated about harnessing pathogens for therapeutics. How-ever, as illustrated by the fate of the fictional Sinclair Lewis character Arrowsmith1 (who attempted to use bacteriophage to cure infections), the use of microorganisms in patients can be fraught with hazard. This issue of the Journal has two papers (1,2) that illustrate the potential use of viruses to lyse human cancer cells. The results from these and other studies are excit-ing and raise the possibility that the time may be near for con-trolled trials to determine whether cytolytic viruses can be used to treat some human cancers. However, there is also the fear that infection of extremely ill patients with live viruses will result in "runaway " viral infection. The concept of using viruses to treat human cancer dates to early in this century [reviewed in (5)]. In the 1950s, it was note