Some patients with 'dismal' diagnosis were alive as long as six years later

modified version of the polio vaccine, infused straight into aggressive brain tumors, helped some patients live for years longer than they normally would have, doctors reported Tuesday.

It’s no miracle cure — only about 20 percent of patients with gliomas were helped — but some are alive six years later, the team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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The team at Duke worked with the National Cancer Institute to design and manufacture a modified version of polio vaccine virus.

Polio viruses are attracted to nerve cells — that’s why they cause paralysis.

The medical team used polio viruses already weakened and altered for use in polio vaccines, and genetically engineered them to carry parts of a common cold virus, called a rhinovirus, known to be attracted to glioma cells.