The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has called a treatment developed by Duke University a “breakthrough” as it uses polio to combat brain cancer. So far results of the experimentative treatment have been remarkable, and the FDA wants to fast-track it so that it will be available to doctors and patients. The treatment works by using the polio virus to attack glioblastomas, malignant tumors that develop on the brain. One of the trial patients is Stephanie Lipscomb, a 20-year-old student who had 98 percent of a tumor removed from her brain in 2011. By 2012, the cancer had returned. With no other options, she volunteered to be part of the trial. Molecular biologist Matthias Gromeier re-engineered the virus by removing a key genetic sequence. Because polio can’t survive without the sequence, he repaired the damage using the cold virus. This re-engineered version of polio can’t cause paralysis or death since it lacks the ability to reproduce normal cells, but what it can do is reproduce cancer cells, and in doing so it releases toxins that poison the cells. After undergoing treatment, Lipscomb’s most recent MRI shows her brain to be cancer free.

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