Question: Do you just pick a random virus and see if it works?

Gioia Cherubini answered on 14 Jun 2010:

No, there are only few viruses that are thought to be able to kill cancer (so-called oncolytic viruses). One of these is Adenovirus, the common cold virus. What we do is manipulate the virus so that it’s not able anymore to replicate in normal cells, but can replicate and kill cancer cells. Once the cancer cell is killed, the virus spreads to the next cancer cell doing the same thing. This means that in principle we don’t need to give a high amount of virus to the patient, because the virus will amplify once inside the cancer.