One of the most interesting things about humanity is how it manages to take something dangerous to it, and make it useful to itself.
We took wolves and domesticated them, turning them into dogs, which have done everything from help us hunt, find dangerous items, warn us of impending danger, or even just sit on our laps and lower our blood pressure. Man harnessed fire, a destructive force that wiped out everything in its path, and now we use it to heat our homes and cook our food. Lighting used to be the weapon of the gods, and now we use it to play Grand Theft Auto on our PlayStation.
Mankind does a lot of things with its miraculous intelligence, but one of the things it's actually best at is taming that which threatens us. If we're afraid of it, you can bet that at some point we're going to find a way to make it work for us.
And it looks like mankind has now gotten around to taming one of its oldest and most deadly predators of all...
The virus.
Mankind attempting to manipulate viruses is a relatively new thing in its long history on this Earth, but it was inevitable. Not that it's always been a good thing. The pandemic and the COVID-19 virus is proof that mankind attempting to alter and change something so destructive can have its drawbacks, but I would say the government's reaction to the virus was more destructive than the virus itself.
I think Sweden proved that.
That said, there are labs out there that are attempting to change the virus to help humankind, not harm it, and it would appear they're already having success.
The idea is that we effectively take viruses, one of our deadliest enemies, and effectively "reprogram" it to attack the things that attack us, effectively making the wolf into a dog all over again.
For instance, the company Genelux has been working on "virotherapy" to attack cancer cells. Breaking down the science-ese, Genelux took the vaccinia virus, known for its role in the smallpox vaccine, and are training it to attack certain cancers, such as brain cancer. This virus can't replicate in normal human cells like wild viruses do, but can in cancer cells, leading to the destruction of tumors.
Meanwhile, Duke University is experimenting with the poliovirus on cancer patients, and the results have been promising according to Duke itself:
A genetically modified poliovirus therapy developed at Duke Cancer Institute shows significantly improved long-term survival for patients with recurrent glioblastoma, with a three-year survival rate of 21 percent in a phase 1 clinical trial.
Comparatively, just 4 percent of patients with the same type of recurring brain tumors were alive at three years when undergoing the previously available standard treatment at Duke.
Glioblastoma is a fairly aggressive cancer, and a 4 percent to 21 percent jump in a three-year survival rate is a pretty big deal.
Locus Biosciences are currently experimenting with bacteriophage therapy, and is attempting to curb the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria using viruses. They are currently in phase two of this research after successful trials:
The results indicate LBP-EC01 exposure can decrease the level of susceptible bacteria in patients infected with E.coli in the bladder. Through a unique dual mechanism, Locus Biosciences’ bacteriophage cocktail infects and replicates to burst target bacteria and the CRISPR-Cas3 technology improves the efficacy of the phages’ ability to kill, irreversibly destroying the bacterial genome without harming human cells or strains of beneficial bacteria. The study found no drug-related adverse effects, underscoring the safety of the company’s precision approach.
As Locus mentions, this kind of therapy isn't exactly new, but it's received greater interest after the pandemic as use of antibiotics exacerbated the existence of drug-resistant bacteria. It warns that by 2050, drug resistant bacteria could be the cause of 10 million deaths annually.
Let's fast-forward 2050. If these technologies are further developed, we can more or less kiss antibiotics goodbye. As helpful as they've been to people, they have been something of "fix it today, regret it tomorrow" concept. We couldn't rely on them forever.
However, with viruses, we can accomplish some seriously incredible things in medical science. To be sure, there will be drawbacks to it, just like there is with every new development. I don't want to go so far as to present the Hollywood idea of a raging virus that kills 90 percent of mankind because we tried to "play God," but I'm sure this can come with its own complications.
But it is exciting to think of the idea that things like cancers and infections can be eliminated with a simple injection of a trained virus. As usual, mankind will use the tools given to it by God for its own benefit, which is one of its greatest talents. We never truly looked at viruses as a species as a tool unless it involved destruction, but with refining and training, they can be the next step in medical technology.
