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Cancer treatment

Mayo Clinic collaboration invents "virus in stealth" to help kill cancer cells (press release)

Saturday, August 06, 2005
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: cancer treatment, health news, Natural News


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The work is still experimental. But it is a key step forward in the science of redirecting or retargeting a virus through genetic engineering. Retargeted measles virus can recognize surface molecules found only on cancerous cells, allowing selective killing. In this way, retargeted cancer-killing viruses help the body, rather than harming it as natural viruses do when they infect cells.

In the current issue of the Journal of Virology, http://jvi.asm.org/ the researchers describe how they invented a way to engineer an alternative outer covering ( coat ) for the virus, using pieces from an animal virus that cannot infect humans.

"Our group's perspective is to exchange pieces on the envelope, the viral coat, with the pieces from the coat of a related virus that has no known relatives that can infect humans," says Roberto Cattaneo, Ph.D., lead researcher and an internationally recognized pioneer in viral targeting technology. "If we can modify the virus and take parts from the Tupaia paramyxovirus ( the shrew virus ) and put them on the measles virus, then we have a virus in stealth. It will not be recognized by the immune system because it's disguised in another coat -- and that way we can get the virus past the immune system."

Significance of the Research

A different Mayo Clinic research team was the first to engineer a measles virus retargeted at the cell entry level and reported on this earlier this year. The current investigation takes the technology a step closer to being useful to human patients by paving the way to get the retargeted measles virus past the immune system so it can actually reach the tumor and destroy it.

Background and Next Steps

Viruses are parasites. They:

attach to, or penetrate a partner on the target cell
fuse membranes to enter the target cell
commandeer the cellular machinery to produce more virus
modulate or control the host immune response
While the stealth approach works, there's a problem -- the disguise works only once because a healthy immune system is so good at its job, it makes antibodies against the modified viral coat and won't be tricked twice. But researchers at Mayo are designing alternative disguises.

"That means we'll have to make another coat to disguise it again, and we have already identified candidate animal viruses that can help us do that, which means we have the prospect of using the same retargeted measles virus with different coats," says Dr. Cattaneo.

Noting that safety is of utmost priority, Dr. Cattaneo stresses that multiple safeguards prevent the unintended creation of a super virus capable of causing a new human disease.

"With this paper we really make the point that there is an untapped resource in the form of animal viruses that can be used as a source of modules that can be combined with human viruses to evade the immune system," Dr. Cattaneo says. "Our lab can do this safely because we have quite an elaborate safety system -- four levels of specificity -- that block, interfere and provide an emergency brake to a virus' ability to spread in normal human cells and cause illness."


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About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journal Natural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

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