Cure or Catastrophe:Newcastle Disease Virus Cancer

Research and Mass Media Coverage

Ryan Smith

Professional Practices

EGR 108.007Mercer University School Of Engineering

Objectives

1. A brief History of Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV)

2. Current clinical studies and research on NDV and cancer

3. The effect of mass media reporting on public perception

Virus’s

1. What is a virus: A micro organism smaller than a bacteria that can reproduce apart from a living cell

1. Can be made of either DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) or RNA ( ribonucleic acid)

For a better visual, click here

Newcastle Disease Virus

NDV is a type of avian (bird) retrovirus that causes illness in a wide variety of birds, but most notably in chickens.

The symptoms (in birds) includes swelling in the respiratory tract (lungs), brain, and/or gastrointestinal tract (intestines).

Retrovirus

NDV can infect people, but it is not very virulent (toxic):

-mild flu-like symptoms

-conjunctivitis (red, runny eyes)

-laryngitis (hard to talk)

NDV in Humans

NDV is a retrovirus

• Retrovirus means that it uses RNA

• RNA is a short genetic sequence that cells use to reproduce DNA (which is our genetic material)

• RNA virus’s tend to be more deadly

• Use a RNA encoding to quickly turn cells into factories

Mercer university School of Engineering EGR 108.007 By: Ryan Smith This box was placed here to prove that This document is the property of Mercer University and Ryan Smith

NDV facts and review

• NDV is an avian flu that can infect people, of which when infecting humans it usually results in flu-like symptoms

• NDV replicates better in Human Tumor Cells than in normal cells

• NDV has both lytic and non-lytic strains

• Lytic and non-lytic are two different methods of virus reproduction, differences being that the lytic cycle destroys the cell and releases the virus’ and the non-lytic simply remains in the DNA of the infected cell and uses the cell to make more infected cells

• NDV reproduces 10,000 times faster inhuman cancer cells which has attracted scientists to investigate its potential in cancer research

Lytic cycle and Non-lytic/Lysogenic cycle

Lysogenic Cycle

Current Research

• 3 different approaches to cancer treatment are being looked at:– Lytic strain of NDV- the infection of cancer

patients with a strain of NDV– Oncolysate vaccine- using fragments of the

virus as an anticancer vaccine– Whole cell vaccine- use of intact cancer cells

with a non-lytic strain of NDV as a “Whole cell vaccine”

The anticancer potential of NDV has been investigated in clinical studies in the US, Germany, and HungaryIt was reported that they have seen some improvement in:

-Improved disease free survival-Complete/partial tumor response-NDV has in isolated studies shown the potential

to cure:Melanoma, Renal, Breast, Ovarian, and many

other types of cancer.

Current Research with NDV

Research Results

NDV-based anticancer therapy has been reported to be of benefit in more than a dozen clinical trials, but according to the Physician Data Query Cancer Clinical Complementary and the Alternative Medicine Editorial Board, the results of these studies should be considered inconclusive because the study designs were weak and the study reports were incomplete.

Effect of mass media (television)

Most people today get their information from television. However, the information on television tends too be inaccurate, based more on professional opinion and exaggerated hopes. In an article by Fowler and Goldstein, they concluded that a lot of airtime is spent on Health stories and those stories are seen by about 165 million Americans. However, few of these stories focused on Newcastle and some even had incorrect and potentially harmful information.

Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ)

• An article published in CMAJ stated “The public gets most of its information about genetics research from the media.”

• Results found only 11% of the newspaper articles were categorized as having moderately to highly exaggerated claims and that 97% of the newspaper articles and 98% of the scientific journal articles discussed the likelihood of benefits of the research.

CMAJ Conclusion

• The majority of newspaper articles accurately conveyed the results of and reflect the claims made in scientific journal articles.

Medical News for the Public To Use? What’s on Local TV News by Pribble, Goldstein,

Fowler, Greenberg, Noel and Howler

• According to this article local television is the major source of information for most Americans and media reporting has increased significantly during the past 10 years.

• Regularly reaches 165 million people• 2795 Broadcasts, 1799 health stories aired were

reviewed in this article• They concluded that local TV devotes a lot of airtime to

health stories yet few focus newscasts on useful information and some stories with factually incorrect information and potentially dangerous advice were aired.

Do the print media “hype” genetic research? A comparison of newspaper stories and peer-

reviewed research papers by Bubela and Caulfield

• According to this article the public gets most of its information about genetics research from the media. They looked at whether or not the media representations may involve exaggerations called “Geno-hype”.

• They found that the majority of articles accurately conveyed the results of and reflect the claims made in the articles reviewed.

Mass Media and Medicine:Challenges and Opportunities

Journal of American Medical Association

• According to this article while misrepresentations of medical information by mass media can have negative consequences, the use of mass media to educate the public about medicine has an enormous potential to do good.

Conclusion

NDV is an exciting area of research with great potential to impact cancer research, treatment and recovery. Many studies although weak and not well controlled show some potential to be of benefit.

Mass media that includes magazines, television, radio stations and newspapers can have an enormous impact-both positive and negative on an individuals health and life. It is crucial that the reporting of health news be factual and that reporting errors be eliminated.

Works cited1.National Cancer Institute (2008). Newcastle Disease Virus (PDQ®). March 18, 2008 from

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/NDV/patientInformation was gathered here so that a cancer patient could get the

pro’s and con’s about Newcastle treatment

2.National Cancer Institute (2008). Newcastle Disease Virus (PDQ®). March 18, 2008

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/NDV/HealthProfessionalThe information here is for doctors too read and get a more indepth

understanding about what the Newcastle treatment really is

3. Csatary, L. K., & Eckhardt, S., & Bukosza, I., & Czegledi, F., & Fenyvesi, C., & Gergely,

P., & Bodey, B., & Csatary, C. M. (1993). Attenuated veterinary virus vaccine for the treatment of cancer. 17(6), 619-27.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8275514?ordinalpos=5&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

This study was conducted during the beginnings of the Newcastle study. It is informative only if you wanted too see how far they have come

Works cited4. Nakaya, T., & Cros, J., & Park, M., & Nakaya, Y., & Zheng, H., & Sagrera, A., &

Villar, E., & García-Sastre, A., & Palese, P. (2001). Recombinant Newcastle Disease Virus as a Vaccine Vector. Journal of Virology. 75(23), 11868–11873.

This article is a study on the effects of NDV

5.Park, A. (2006, January 1). How to make a better vaccine. Time, Error, can not

find correct information from citeThis article is how the opinion of the media can be taken into

account

6. Janke, M., & Peeters, B., & de Leeuw, O., & Moorman, R., & Arnold, A.,

& Fournier, P., & Schirrmacher, V. (2007). Recombinant Newcastle disease virus (NDV) with inserted gene coding for GM-CSF as a new vector for cancer immunogene therapy. Nature, 14, 1639–1649

Another study of NDV

Works Cites (continued)7.Young, J. S., (2002, February 13) Mass Media and Medicine: Challenges and Opportunities. JAMA. 287

(6), 772.This article is about how the media tends to overexagerate medical findings and how medical

commercials can be misleading

8.Wilson, K., & Code, K., & Dornan, C., & Ahmad, N., & Hébert, A., & Graham, I. (2004, January 5). The

reporting of the theoretical health risks by the media: Canadian newspaper reporting of potential blood transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. BMC Public Health. 4 (1), 1471-2458.

This article was about how the media tries to convey information to the public and also what they include. Also it gives suggestions on how to improve the accuracy of the information

9.Vastag, B. (2003, February 12) Openness in Biomedical Research Collides With Heightened Security

Concerns. JAMA. 289 (6), 686-690The security risks of presenting all medical findings to the media.

10.Pribble, J. M., &Doldstein, K. M., & Fowler, E. F., & Greenberg, M. J., & Noel, S. K., & Howell, J. D.

(2006, March) Medical News for the Public to Use? What’s on Local TV News. Trends from the field. (12) 170-176

It evaluates health topics and reports charectoristics of health stories in local television news across the US