RAREBITS:

Virologist Grant McFadden spent two decades studying a deadly virus in rabbits that didn't seem to affect humans.

Then he discovered it could actually treat cancers in humans. Now, the Taekwondo black belt is prepping for a fight against tumors, using a virus as his weapon.

Fears of mutations introduced by scientific tampering by humans are rampant throughout the sci-fi genre. The reality though? A bit less dramatic, says Grant McFadden, a virologist who has spent the past two decades trying to tweak virus treatments so they can defeat deadly diseases. There are no zombies in this film. Instead, there are bunnies that could hold the key to curing cancer.

Discovered in the 1880s, the myxoma virus is a deadly pathogen that was found to kill 99.9 percent of the European hoppers it infected. It was so effective in culling their numbers that Australians used it as a population control technique in the 1950s. McFadden, a 71-year-old Arizona State University researcher, has tried to decode just why the virus is so fatal for rabbits, yet isn't even remotely deadly for humans. 

But through research -- which he conducted alongside his wife and occasional lab partner, Dr. Alexandra Lucas -- McFadden happened upon another discovery beyond his wildest imagination: that this bunny-killing virus can actually attack cancer cells in humans ... without harming a patient at all. "It will infect them [cancer cells], kill them, but leave the host alone as long as it is not a rabbit," McFadden says.

That stunning finding is at the heart of OncoMyx Therapeutics, an Arizona-based biotech company that McFadden co-founded four years ago that's quickly becoming a mainstay in the competitive industry to battle cancer. The company raised $25 million in series A funding in 2019. A series B funding round is underway. And in April, it presented preclinical data at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research that pointed to the effectiveness of myxoma-based treatments against non-small cell lung cancer. 

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