Herpes Therapy for Brain Cancer Backed by Panel

Scientists will attack brain cancers by infecting tumor cells with a herpes gene and then killing the cancer with a herpes drug, under an experimental therapy approved by a federal committee Monday.

The experimental therapy, proposed by medical scientists at the University of Iowa, was approved unanimously Monday by a National Institutes of Health committee. It now must be approved by the NIH director and by the Food and Drug Administration.

Dr. Kenneth W. Culver, an NIH researcher who is moving to Iowa to undertake the experimental trial, said the technique already has been tried on five patients at the NIH. He said they have developed no toxic reactions, but it is too early to determine if there has been improvement in the cancers.

Under the system proposed, patients suffering from malignant brain cancer, which is almost inevitably fatal, would undergo surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible.

After surgery, the patients would be infused with a virus that has been genetically altered so that it is not infectious and so that it contains a gene from the herpes simplex virus.

Once inside the brain, the genetically altered virus would infect any remaining tumor cells.

Only brain cancer patients who have failed to improve after standard therapies would be considered for the experimental trials.