Question: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480249/quotes?qt0312024 This is from the film 'I Am Legend' in which a cure for cancer turns the population of the world into zombies, but I wondered, would it be possible to genetically modify a virus to combat cancer?

Sarah Thomas answered on 25 Mar 2011:

I love that film and I think this is a really interesting question!! The thing with viruses is that they tend to grow and mutliply inside the cells that they invade and I don’t think they are very good at differentiating between healthy cells and cancer cells. Also I would be kind of worried that if they tried to make an anti-cancer virus, that this could help up making the person worse (and possibly lead to zombie like side effects!!).

What I think is more likely is that scientist will find a way of using the bodies own immune system to recognise cancer cells as being bad and fight them off. Our immune systems are really good at killing off bacteria and other things that threaten us, and I think this is entirely possible for scientists to harness this in some way and create an anti-cancer vaccine.