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Sure enough, "2,6" prolonged the life of leukemic mice by 60%. It destroyed or controlled rat tumors. It killed other tumors in test-tube cultures. On human patients, it acted as a palliative, but not a cure. It has secured "remissions," for instance, for a few leukemic children.
Promising Molds. Dr. Rhoads and his associates believe that no possibility, even faintly promising, should be neglected. One long shot is to look for something in the secretions of molds. One such secretion, penicillin, has a differential effect on bacteria: it kills bacteria but leaves human tissue unharmed. Molds might conceivably produce something with a differential effect on cancer cells.
In a cold, air-conditioned room in Sloan-Kettering, various molds (green or white mats) are growing in flasks. The program is still young, but already one mold has been found that secretes a substance with a slight differential effect on mouse tumors. Dr. Rhoads does not even want to talk about it yet. He has no "cancer penicillin."
Behind a door marked "No Visitors" (no one may enter who has not been properly immunized), works attractive Dr. Alice Moore, a leading virus fancier. "I'm a virus girl," she says, "so I thought I'd ry 'em." She tried influenza virus on can-:erous mice. No effect. She tried the virus of herpes (inflammation of the skin and mucous membranes). No effect.
Then she turned to the deadly virus of Russian spring-and-summer encephalitis, injected it into the abdominal cavity of cancerous mice. In about two days the firm, round tumors turned into blobs of pus. All the cancer cells apparently died. But the virus then went on and attacked the nerves and brain. Four days later the mice, apparently cured of cancer, died of encephalitis. Nonetheless, the virus had shown a dramatic differential effect. It went first to the tumor and thrived there before attacking the brain.
Try the Viruses. There is a long list of things that Dr. Alice can do now to exploit her discovery—so many things that Dr. Rhoads is enlarging her dangerous laboratory. One is to try the encephalitis virus on monkeys. The laboratory strain has lived so long in mouse brains that it may have lost its ability to attack primates. If it proves harmless to monkeys, it probably will not hurt humans. The final step will be to try it on human cancer patients to see if it attacks their tumors.
Another thing that Dr. Alice hopes to do is to grow her virus for a long time in mouse tumors, transferring it from mouse to mouse as the tumors die. When grown on new food, viruses often change their ways. Dr. Alice hopes that the encephalitis virus might be taught to give up its taste for brain tissue while increasing its appetite for tumors.
If all these methods fail, there are plenty of other viruses to try against cancer. Some of them, comparatively harmless to normal human tissue, may attack tumors. If some such virus could be found or developed, it would be an ideal anti-cancer drug. Circulating through the body like a ferret through rat holes, it could hunt down every gangster cell.