American researchers have shown that the Zika virus can destroy the cells responsible for the most common brain tumor.
A dreaded virus, Zika could become a weapon against cancer. Researchers at the universities of Washington and San Diego (United States) suggest that this infectious agent responsible for microcephaly in fetuses could effectively destroy brain tumors. They present their results in The Journal of Experimental Medicine.
The destructive power of the Zika virus was discovered last year during the epidemic in Brazil. Thousands of pregnant women infected with the virus have given birth to children with severe neurological malformations. Able to lodge in the brains of fetuses, the Zika virus multiplies in neurons and neuronal stem cells, causing their death and interrupting brain development.
A devastating process that could prove to be life-saving in patients with glioblastoma, the most common brain tumor and one of the deadliest cancers. Within two years of diagnosis, most patients die.
Outsmart those resistant to treatment
Resistance to treatment is one of the causes of this significant mortality. Indeed, current drugs and techniques fail to destroy a particular type of cells, called “glioblastoma stem cells”, responsible for maintaining and proliferation of the tumor.
But these cells do not seem to resist the Zika virus. In the laboratory, the pathogen successfully infected glioblastoma stem cells taken from patients. This success was found in tests with around twenty laboratory guinea pigs.
Two weeks after becoming infected with Zika, the mice developed smaller tumors than those treated with a placebo. The infected mice also lived longer than the control animals.
According to the research team, chemotherapy and Zika virus infection have complementary actions. Standard treatment removes most of the tumor, and the Zika virus attacks the remaining cells that cause cancer. “We believe that Zika can one day be used in combination with current therapies to eradicate the entire tumor,” said Prof. Milan Chheda, professor of neurology at the University of Washington.
Use a mutated version
Doctors imagine that the virus will need to be injected into the tumor during the tumor removal operation, because if it is injected through the bloodstream, the immune system could intercept and eliminate it.
They recognize that this therapeutic option is worrying, but they assure that the risks are low in adults. Indeed, Zika primarily attacks neuronal stem cells. However, they are present in small quantities in the adult brain. By studying brain tissue taken from adults with epilepsy, the researchers confirmed that the virus did not attack non-cancerous cells.
And like vaccines, scientists explain that it is possible to inactivate or attenuate the Zika virus by introducing mutations into its genome. A mutated version tested in the laboratory and which brings satisfactory results, underline the authors in their study.
“We will continue to add mutations to make the virus more sensitive to the immune system and thus prevent the possible spread of infection,” says Michael Diamond, professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Washington and one of the co -authors of the study. Once we make these changes I think it will become impossible for the virus to defeat the immune system and cause disease. “
To be sure, many clinical trials and years of research will still be necessary.
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