A mosquito-borne disease known for causing severe skull deformities in babies may one day become humanity’s ally. Duke University scientists and others have created a weakened version of the Zika virus that could potentially be repurposed to treat the often fatal brain cancer. In laboratory experiments, their virus appeared to be able to target and kill tumor cells while largely sparing healthy cells.
Zika virus It has been known since the 1940s but has only recently received widespread attention. Previously, the virus had only been recorded as an occasional cause of fever in parts of Africa and Asia, but starting in 2015, the virus began to spread rapidly in the Americas, triggering large-scale outbreaks in countries such as Brazil. While most cases of Zika infection have no or mild symptoms, these outbreaks led to the discovery that the virus can be transmitted from mother to baby during pregnancy and rarely causes serious congenital disorders in newborns, particularly microcephaly (larger than normal small head). In adults, Zika virus can also rarely cause Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disorder that can cause long-term muscle weakness and even life-threatening paralysis.
The Zika epidemic in the Americas subsided in 2017, and global incidence has remained low since then (no local infections have been reported in the United States since 2018).But the virus is still circulating In most parts of the world, Zika virus is also transmitted by mosquitoes, so Zika virus may pose a new public health threat in the future. So scientists have been trying to develop a vaccine to combat it.
Other studies have found that Zika prefers to infect and kill neural stem cells in developing fetuses, causing microcephaly and other complications.But because brain tumor cells tend to be similar to these stem cells (for example, they all grow very quickly), scientists working on a Zika vaccine theoretical An active but weakened version of the virus could be turned into a homing weapon against these cancers, especially glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most common form. One of the research teams is from the Duke-NUS School of Medicine, a collaboration between Duke and the National University of Singapore.
In their latest research, publish Last month, a Duke-NUS research team found evidence in the Journal of Translational Medicine that their Zika vaccine strain could indeed be such a weapon, at least in a petri dish.
They found that their live attenuated virus could easily infect and destroy GBM cells, killing 65% to 90% of GBM cells in the population. They also found that the virus had a harder time damaging healthy cells. For example, the vaccine strain did successfully infect a small proportion of blood vessel cells in the brain (9 to 20 percent) but did not kill them. While other research groups have shown that weakened Zika viruses have the potential to selectively kill cancer cells, the authors say their study is the first “in-depth molecular dissection” of how this happens.
“Since the Zika virus outbreak in 2016, there have been understandable concerns about the nature of the virus and its devastating effects,” said Associate Professor, Senior Research Center for Cancer and Stem Cell Biology, Duke University-NUS said study author Ann-Marie Chacko.program, in a statement from college. “Through our work, we hope to show Zika virus in a new light by highlighting its potential to kill cancer cells.”
Research into Zika virus as a cancer killer is still in its early stages. But other brain cancer-killing viruses have been tested in human trials, and here are the preliminary results: promising results. The Duke-NUS team plans to develop their neutered virus as a Zika vaccine and cancer treatment, which may be able to target a variety of cancers throughout the body, including lung, breast, prostate and ovarian cancers.
“When live viruses are attenuated, they can be used safely and effectively against infectious diseases, not only as a vaccine but also as an effective tumor eradication agent, with benefits to human health,” Chacko said.