According to researchers, common cold virus can become a new tool in the fight against cancer indicting that the cancer killing viruses could soon become part of a widespread treatment option.

The team of researchers from conducted a study on colon cancer patients and arrived at results that such cancer killing viruses could be developed to treat patients. They found that a common cold virus can kill tumors and trigger an immune response in the patients, when it is injected into the blood stream.

Researchers at the UK’s Leeds University and the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) said that the viruses rode on blood cells and were protected from antibodies in the blood stream that might have destroyed its ability to fight cancer.

The research suggests that viral therapies like could be injected into the blood stream routinely on patients which could make them suitable for treating a range of cancers. The researchers studied 10 patients with advanced bowel cancer and found that the reovirus killed cancer cells directly and triggered an immune response that helped destroy left over cancer cells.

“Viral treatments like reovirus are showing real promise in patient trials. This study gives us the very good news that it should be possible to deliver these treatments with a simple injection into the blood stream," said Kevin Harrington from ICR, who co-led the study.

The research was partly funded by charity Cancer Research UK. The findings were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine on Wednesday.