By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters)
- Viruses that cause the common cold could hold important clues
to ways of tackling cancer, Scottish scientists said Tuesday.
About one-sixth
of the 200 different types of cancer, including cervical cancer
and some kinds of leukemia, are triggered by viruses but how they
do it is still a mystery.
Researchers
at Scotland's University of St. Andrews hope the human adenovirus
which causes colds and has similar properties to other viruses
will shed new light on those that cause cancer and open up another
line of attack against the disease.
``We're using
a cold virus to try to crack the problem because although it doesn't
cause cancer itself, it has features in common with viruses that
do,'' Professor Ron Hay, the head of the research team, said in
a telephone interview.
One of the
common features is a tumor suppressor gene, called P53, which
acts like a brake to stop cancerous cells from dividing uncontrollably.
Cancer starts
when damaged cells replicate instead of destroying themselves.
Cancer viruses
destroy p53 so that it can't stop the cell division, which continues
and goes on to cause cancer. The adenovirus produces molecules
that also damage p53 but without causing cancer.
``The reason
adenoviruses don't cause cancer is that they kill the cells at
the end of the infectious cycle,'' Hay explained.
``In viruses
which cause cancer, you get a situation where p53 is destroyed,
and there may be other viral proteins which induce other changes
in the cell to tell the cell to keep replicating.''
Hay and Professor
David Lane, of the Cancer Research Campaign in Dundee, are studying
two adenovirus molecules to find out how they stop p53 from working.
P53 is genetically
altered in 80 percent of cancers but in the other 20 percent of
cancers the gene is still intact.
``The idea
is that if we can identify these similarities in cancer cells
we could identify targets for further drug development,'' Hay
added.
If scientists
could stop p53 from being degraded or disabled, the damaged cells
would destroy themselves instead of replicating.
|
