ARTICLE EXTRAS
Moments after being injected with a tagged virus, the entire body of a mouse glows under specialized cameras designed to pick up light emanating from deep beneath the skin. Over time the light becomes concentrated to a few key spots. These are the tumors where the virus, a strain of vaccinia, is replicating like mad.
"That's what we like to see: strong signal in the tumor and not much anywhere else," says virologist Steve Thorne, a research associate at Stanford University. Thorne collaborates with David Kirn, who founded Jennerex on the premise that engineered vaccinia virus can be employed as a cancer-killing tool.
Thorne was at his grandfather's funeral outside of London when he first heard about the American scientist who was looking to develop viruses to selectively infect and kill cancers.
"My grandfather was David Kirn's cousin's godfather," Thorne says. Kirn had recently arrived at Imperial ...
