Could Cancer Be Cured By The Cold Virus?

Maybe.

How a cold virus works (or any virus, really) is that it hijacks your body's cells to make more virus.  It does this by latching onto cell proteins and injecting it's own genetic code.  These genes take over the cell, telling it to stop other functions and just make more virus.  Like a ripe fruit, when the cell has made enough new virus it just explodes, releasing the virus back into the world.

Now, imagine if you could genetically alter a cold virus so that it particularly liked cancer cells.  Cancer cells to tend to have some unique proteins on their surface (surface proteins is what viruses lock onto).  Then the virus could mostly attack just cancer cells, getting them to explode and then not keep replicating themselves to make more cancer cells.

Sure would be a lot nicer to just have a bad cold, rather than have to undergo chemo or radiotherapy.

It's a very preliminary treatment idea, still very much in development.  And it might not be able to entirely remove cancer, but it might be especially useful for when cancer has spread to many parts of the body, or when cancer is in a surgically inoperable location.