The Cure for Cancer Might be: HIV

RGautier writes "Wired News has published that Scientists have successfully modified the AIDS-causing HIV in such a way that it can attack metasticized melanoma (cancer cells). The impact of genetic research on cancer research is in and of itself amazing. To mix this with the strategy of using one strong enemy against another is brilliance! Research will continue, obviously, but they are already reporting success on living creatures." Just think: between HIV and carrots we'll be all set.

Comments

Nothing new really

[FiReaNGeL]

Gene therapy use lentivirus-based (HIV) vectors for quite some time now; it's nothing new really; a marketing team found the 'Cure Cancer with HIV!' twist interesting I guess.

When pseudotyped with the right envelope, these virus can infect efficiently any type of cell. They can also transduce non-dividing cells, which is usefull. They lack almost every gene of HIV; they retain certain structures which allow packaging of the genome in the virus and the viral promoter, but that's about it. Viruses are packaged in special cell lines containing the viral components on plasmids most of the time, and preparations are tested for recombinants. Its the best technology out there, but its nothing new, really.

Brilliance?

[aprilsound]

To mix this with the strategy of using one strong enemy against another is brilliance!

As others have said, it sounds potentialy dangerous (mutation et al), but the idea of using something bad to treat something else bad is by no means innovative. A few examples:

chemotherapy - is just poison. it works because the cancer cells absorb the poison much quicker than normal cells.

radiation therapy - again, radiation by itself is bad.

most over the counter acne treatments - are just some form or acid that kills the bacteria on the skin
As for reengineering a virus to take on something else, while facinating, its hardly a new idea. If you are interested in this sort of thing and haven't read Orson Scott Card's Xenocide (part of the Ender Series), you might check it out.

Melanoma is cancer. It is NOT ALL cancer

[wowbagger]

The summary of the article (and many of the comments) would have you believe this is a potential "cure for cancer".

Melanoma is a subset of the set of all cancers - specifically, it is a form of skin cancer - more specifically, it is a cancer formed from the skin cells that give skin its pigmentation.

Melanoma is NOT *all cancers* - thus even if this modified virus will kill 100% of all melanomas and have 0% harmful side-effects this does NOT make it a "cure for cancer" - merely a "cure for a type of cancer".

The will need to generalize this virus to attack ALL cancerous cells, and NOT to attack any other cells.

Now, if you can work out how a virus can tell the difference between a cancerous cell and a normal but rapidly reproducing cell, you have a Nobel prize awaiting.

A scientific explanation

[adeydas]

80% of the virus has been completely removed and it is just now a carrier. Besides it has got a sindbis cloak that affect only insects and birds, so I believe that the person vaccinated wouldn't contract HIV. Ofcourse there are chances of mutations but when the virus is so weak, its like 0.001%.

Re:It will never see the light of market shelves .

[amerinese]

You're mistaken =). Some gene therapies use viruses as vectors, but of course that's rare as hell. Vaccines use weakened or disabled ("dead" if you consider the virus to have ever been alive in the first place) forms of a virus to get your immune system to produce antibodies that will also work next time around when you are exposed to the real thing. This works because your body can sit around and make antibodies without having the virus reproducing rapidly and generally causing havok. When you're exposed to the virus for real, your body already has figured out how to recognize the virus and has a stock of antibodies it can immediately use on it.

Using a virus as a vector refers to inserting a payload into the viral sequence (the desired DNA or RNA), which then gets inserted into the cell's genetic sequence as the virus inserts itself.

So basically I think there's quite a confusion here. I mean, it sounds like we're using one enemy to fight another, but if we can figure out how to get HIV to fight cancer, this new HIV won't go out there and suddenly turn regular HIV into good HIV that kills cancer. In fact, I don't know if it's such a good idea to use one enemy to fight another besides the fact that it sounds ironic. I would've thought that HIV would be one of the worst candidates with its fast mutational rate and ability to attack T-cells making it extremely dangerous. Obviously though, there must be some properties of HIV that make it a good vector in this case.

old Russian idea

[peter303]

Not exactly HIV, but some European scientists, particularly in the eastern block have been promoting the use of "phages", or general viruses for all kinds of things like killing bacteria and cancer. This idea was somewhat popular before the distillation of antibiotics in the 1930s, then retreated to the backwaters. Its been reviving as more bacteria develop resistance to all of the antibiotics.