Croatian virologist treats her own breast cancer with experimental virus therapy

A case report published in the journal Vaccines details how a 53-year-old Croatian virologist, Beata Halassy, self-administered an experimental treatment to combat her own stage 3 breast cancer. Facing a recurrence of cancer in 2020 at the site of her previous mastectomy, Halassy decided to forego harsh chemotherapy. Instead, she leveraged her expertise in virology to employ oncolytic virotherapy (OVT), an emerging field of cancer treatment that uses genetically modified viruses to target and destroy cancer cells while provoking the immune system into fighting them.

Halassy is the head of a research unit at the University of Zagreb but stresses that she isn't a specialist in OVT. Her proficiency in cultivating and purifying viruses in the laboratory gave her the confidence to pursue this unproven treatment. She used two types of viruses: a strain of the measles virus commonly used in childhood vaccines, and a vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) known to cause, at worst, mild influenza-like symptoms. Both viruses have good safety records and are known to infect the type of cells from which her tumor originated. The measles virus has been trialed against metastatic breast cancer, and both have been used in OVT clinical trials.

Her idea was that the virus would attack the tumor and direct her immune system to the location of the viral intruder in her body. "An immune response was, for sure, elicited," Halassy stated. She self-administered the treatment by injecting the lab-grown viruses directly into her tumor for two months. During this period, her condition was continuously monitored by oncologists at the University Hospital of Zagreb, who were prepared to intervene with chemotherapy if necessary.

The size of Halassy's tumor initially swelled but then decreased during the treatment. After two months, it had shrunk, become softer, and the surrounding tissue had loosened, making it easier for doctors to remove surgically. As a result, the tumor could be successfully surgically removed. Analysis of the tissue showed that her immune system had indeed attacked the tumor, as it was thoroughly infiltrated with immune cells called lymphocytes. She experienced some mild side effects but no serious adverse reactions occurred during her treatment.

After the surgery, Halassy followed a one-year treatment with trastuzumab, a common medication for treating some types of breast cancer. As of today, she has remained cancer-free for four years. Her self-experiment not only fought her tumor but also changed her scientific work. "The focus of my laboratory has completely turned because of the positive experience with my self-treatment," she stated.

Publishing her findings proved to be a significant challenge due to ethical concerns surrounding self-experimentation. Halassy faced many rejections from scientific journals, receiving more than a dozen before her study was accepted by the journal Vaccines. "It took a brave editor to publish the report," she remarked, reflecting on the difficulties she encountered. She found it unjust that her article was rejected for this reason, noting, "The major concern was always ethical issues." Halassy emphasized in her paper that self-medicating with cancer-fighting viruses "should not be the first approach" in the case of a cancer diagnosis.

Her decision to self-treat and publish her findings has sparked discussions about the ethical dilemmas of self-experimentation and the potential risks of encouraging others to try unproven treatments. Jacob Sherkow, a law and medicine researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, commented on the situation. He said that the problem is not that Halassy used self-experimentation as such, but that publishing her results could encourage others to reject conventional treatment and try something similar. Sherkow noted that people with cancer can be particularly susceptible to trying unproven treatments and stated, "It's also important to ensure that the knowledge that comes from self-experimentation isn't lost." He added, "I think it ultimately does fall within the line of being ethical, but it isn't a slam-dunk case," expressing a desire to see a commentary fleshing out the ethics perspective published alongside the case report.

Stephen Russell, an OVT specialist who runs virotherapy biotech company Vyriad in Rochester, Minnesota, agrees that Halassy's case suggests the viral injections worked to shrink her tumor and cause its invasive edges to recede. However, he doesn't think her experience breaks new ground because researchers are already trying to use OVT to help treat earlier-stage cancer. Russell isn't aware of anyone trying two viruses sequentially in this manner but says it isn't possible to deduce whether this mattered in an "n of 1" study. He stated, "Really, the novelty here is, she did it to herself with a virus that she grew in her own lab."

After Halassy's self-experimentation, it has become a topic of discussion among prominent scientists, with experts deliberating the ethical dilemmas involved in self-experimental treatments like hers. Her case adds her name to the long list of scientists who have decided to use their own bodies as subjects of experimentation. Throughout history, there have been scientists who experiment on themselves, sparking widespread controversy similar to historical figures like Max von Pettenkofer, who drank broth containing Vibrio cholerae to prove that this bacterium was not the cause of cholera.

Despite the challenges and controversies, Halassy felt a responsibility to publish her findings. She was particularly determined to persevere after she came across a review highlighting the value of self-experimentation. Halassy told Nature that she clearly wrote that experimenting on oneself "is not the appropriate first step" in a cancer diagnosis. Her hope is that her work will inspire further studies in this area and lead to the development of cancer treatments that are less harmful and even better than current treatments.

Sources: The Economic Times, NRC Handelsblad, Navbharat Times

This article was written in collaboration with generative AI company Alchemiq