Canadian researchers are working on a new method to provide treatment for prostate cancer using a virus.

In the research, boffins administered the virus to six volunteer patients and discovered that it destroyed cancer cells without disturbing normal tissue.

According to the research, the respiratory, enteral, orphan virus (commonly known as reovirus) is a non-attenuated, environmental virus, which has indicated oncolytic possibility against various cancer types including lymphoid, ovarian, breast, pancreatic and high-grade glioma cancer.

Individuals exposed to it undergo, at most, modest flu-like respiratory symptoms or diarrhea.

This is the first time the reovirus has been analyzed against prostatic adenocarcinoma.

Researcher Don Morris, medical oncologist in the Department of Oncology at the Tom Baker Cancer Center in Alberta, Canada, stated, "The reovirus is a very common, ubiquitous virus that most people are exposed to. As far as we know, it doesn''t cause any significant illness in humans, even though when someone is exposed to it, it manifests, at most, as a mild respiratory infection or mild diarrhea."

"For the treatment of localized prostate cancer, we found that the reovirus is safe and has evidence of specific tumour vs. normal prostate cell efficacy. Our results are a stepping stone into future prostate cancer clinical trials with another category of cancer therapeutics," he added.

The results of the research have been released in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. (With Input from Agencies)