The end of chemotherapy?

Are we finally in the end-days of chemotherapy? If we are, the toxic kill-or-cure agent will have been toppled by the common cold—and it could all happen within the next few years. By then, the cold virus may well have become the standard treatment to beat a range of cancers, many of which are currently considered untreatable.

Virotherapy—which uses adapted viruses and bacteria to treat cancer and diseases of the central nervous system—has been on the medical radar for more than a century, but it’s suddenly taken center stage.

Just in the past few months, researchers from the UK’s University of Surrey have reported using the common cold virus, coxsackievirus, to treat 15 cases of bladder cancer, and found it can eradicate