Research shocker: genetically engineered viruses seek out, kill cancer
By Laura June 
posted July 20th 2010 10:21AM
posted July 20th 2010 10:21AM
New research at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Center seeks to turn the human body into a genetically engineered cancer-killing machine. The fact that the human body doesn't see cancer as a threat to be destroyed naturally is part of what makes treating it so difficult, so this research uses a harmless, HIV-like virus as the vehicle to direct T-cells (which fight disease) to lymphocytes, and simultaneously carry a reporter gene, which show up in positron emission tomography (PET) scanning, as you can see in the photographs above. So far the researchers have injected the cells into the bloodstreams of melanoma-infected mice, and they began to see evidence of their work within two or three days, and by ten days, it was obvious that in most cases, the cells were indeed fighting the cancer. The process, they admit, could take longer in human beings, and would require about one billion tumor seeking lymphocytes per person treated. They are currently working on creating a vehicle to safely direct the lymphocytes in the human body, and expect the human trial leg of the study to begin within one year.
The problem in humans is that those viruses end up cause cancers by inadvertently leading to the formation of oncogenic gene sequences....
When I read this, all I could think of was "Umbrella Corporation." If the robots don't get us, the man-made viruses will!
"Harmless, HIV-like virus". Ahem.
@Vicada My thoughts exactly...oxymoron much?
@Vicada
it just means that is sails past our immune system.. jez you guys are all so filled full of misconceptions or i'm missing the sarcasm.
@MrJimlad
I think it's just a confusing way to word things to the average Joe, who doesn't know much about the HIV cancer, or how this experimental treatment works.
@chispito
Yes... the average joe, who doesn't know that HIV is not cancer and has nothing to do with cancer.
@Vicada
I am guessing by HIV-like they mean that is is a retrovirus....
@gotoday
Obviously it was a typo.
Man, if it's not the inevitable, ever-approaching robot apocalypse, it's something else. Can you guys see it??? We're gonna be a bunch of zombies fighting off terminators!! Or zombies in The Matrix! Oh what the future holds...
Is this as monumentally huge as I think it is? An honest cure fir cancer?....... How can you joke about something like this?
@Thor e I'm not sure, I hope so.
@wemustcontrolpeople
I had leukemia at 12 and I'm free of it now and 18.
Joking about it and retaining a humour is the best thing you can do.
I welcome everyone to take the piss.
My dad: "For the first time ever I actually have more hair on my head than you".
...classic.
@Kromatik True enough bud. One should always take time to laugh and smile whenever possible!
Wouldn't it make more sense to mark the cancer cells with a fake virus so that the NKT cells would see them as a threat and do what they do best?
A little interesting factoid, especially for those who are saying "poor mice" ... this research has been going on for over a decade at NIH. There is a guy in charge who is total medical genius and could have delivered a cure for cancer a LONG time ago. He has been stifled by bureaucratic red tape and animal-friendly tree-huggers. His original research was on primates but he lost them about two years into it due to a) budget issues (each one costs the government a quarter to half a million dollars) and b) concern for the public opinion (on the animal subjects). You hear of individuals (like Gates) and companies invest millions (if not billions, in total) into major disease research but they don't tell you that the money goes largely into the administrative costs of running their "organization" (think Susan G. Komen). 501(c)(3)s are the biggest scam ever. Just a cover-up for a paid lifestyle.
@Langdon Alger
Agreed. Why would anyone cure a disease? they just want to market a treatment to make money.
@Runawaywill Amen, brutha ... just like the Prophet, Chris Rock, said ... "There ain’t no money in the cure. The money’s in the medicine. That’s how you get paid. On the comeback." Also, "they can't even cure athlete's foot!" Good times!
@Langdon Alger
All the money is in the patenting of the cure, there is the money....think if you could cure anyone with cancer and one 1company could supply the cure, you would pay the 5,000 or 15,000 for the cure for your wife/chilren(and or hoes and trix as john winthrop once said,"ain't nothing but hoes and trixs")
this is a classic alliance with one enemy to defeat another. I smell the potential for betrayal!
Gotta point out the source typo...it's PNAS, not PNA for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
About fucking time!
The source was published June 18th, why are we just hearing about it now?
@wemustcontrolpeople
It was *contributed* June 18, "published online before print July 12, 2010." Also, I doubt there are as many PNAS-reading Engadget contributers as there are Apple/Android followers.
@PurplePlatty I see.
Seriously guys? They may have found a cure for freaking CANCER, and all you guys are commenting on is that we're all going to be killed when it turns people into zombies, or other monsters? How about it can potentially cure CANCER? Your loved ones won't have to face a debilitating, painful round of treatments, which only have a chance of curing it or putting it into remission? Grow up, and give props to people that deserve it. Whether or not it works, they're doing more for humanity than all of you (and me) put together.
@sfreemanoh
Do you think the average person could afford this new procedure when our becomes available?
@cd5love96 How much do you think DVD players cost when they came out in 1996?
@sfreemanoh What's a "loved ones"? 8oP
@cd5love96 That's what health insurance is for. If you don't have health insurance, sorry, that's life, there's nothing I can do about it. My point isn't how much it may cost, but that there could be an actual cure for cancer. But ya know what, insurance companies cover charges for thousands of dollars for cancer treatments right now for millions of people. I'm sure the new treatment wouldn't be so cost prohibitive that they would deny covering it. At least not if they don't want to be sued.
@sfreemanoh
Thousands of dollars is a bit of an understatement. In 3 months I have burned through 40K, and I still have a year of treatments left... And there is no guarantee that it will not come back.
One treatment would probably be cheaper for the insurance company plus less painful for the "client".
But like you said, that's what health insurance is for.
@3sheets I'm sorry to hear it dude, I hope it works out for you. I've been lucky so far, at least 1/2 dozen family members have had various forms of cancer (mostly breast), and only one hasn't survived. I had no idea of the actual cost of the treatments, but what you're saying doesn't surprise me at all. Hospitals cost whatever they want, probably because insurance companies usually pay for the services, not the actual people.
@sfreemanoh
I will be fine :), I have come to grips with the cards I have been given, and I'll play the hell out of them!
1 out of 6 and 6 out of 12, those are some ruff statistic to swallow. Just get a full body MRI with contrast every 6 months, and you will be ok! O and stay away from the chalky milk contrast crap, get the injection. The chalky mixture is the worst, I would rather cut off my foot with a spork than drink that crap! The injection feels like your body temp elevated to 150F in two seconds, and then feels like you pissed your self (even though you didn't)... lol... but its over in 5 seconds.
And how many people have you treated so far?
-Well, we've had ten thousand and nine clinical trials in humans so far.
And how many are cancer-free?
-Ten thousand and nine.
So you have actually cured cancer.
-Yes, yes... yes, we have.
I'm hopeful for stuff like this, because chemotherapy is like beating yourself with a bat in order to fix a hangnail.
I can see us killing ourselves off. People shouldn't mess around with nature and altering it. It wouldn't be a bad idea to get your gun licenses and prepare for the end. It's like I AM LEGEND except most of us will probably die and won't be as bad ass.
@cd5love96
That would have been a better movie (and what I thought it was going to be). I thought that this guy was sealed up someplace and a generically engineered virus wiped out everyone, and he had to figure out how to survive alone and search for other people.
On a side note, I really liked how they had a commercial for Gardacil or whatever the name of the HPV vaccine for girls is right before the movie started.
Anyway, a cure for cancer is good. There should be a voluntary 'experimental' process for people who need it today and are willing to be medical experiments to possibly improve their lives and to further medical science.
And so the 'zombie apocalypse' shall begin. hehe.
No need to panic though if you've played some zombie games or watched some zombie films cause you'll be ready. You just need some guns, ammos, chainsaws, etc. haha. Unless of course you are the zombie, then you're f*cked up. lmao.
Anyway, this is good news in the world of medicine.
Umm... not that this is cool or anything, but there are so many other cool biomedical research developments that are published in hundreds of biomedical journals every month that don't get any coverage at all... why single this one out specifically (particularly since using viral vectors to infect host or xenograft cells as methods to either detect or kill cancer cells is neither new nor unique these days)?
Additionally, those pictures of the mice with the highlighted regions is based on bioluminescence (the reporter "gene" is actually a gene derived from fireflies that lights up when given a particular protein, and is incorporated in this case with the virus-infected T-cells), so that's the cool thing about this study (and many other studies that are out there) rather than the fact they used microPET. Just wanted to make sure the readers understand this...
@whymewhynot
Whoops, I meant "Not that this ISN'T cool or anything..."
I wish there was a way to edit posts (and for me to spell and grammar check before I hit "Submit")!
Human Trial Leg ?? Attached or not ???
So it's like a T...Virus? Why does that sound familiar...
Like whymewhynot, I'm scratching my head trying to figure out why this got Engadget's attention...
None of the tech in this journal article is new. Viral mediated cancer killing, and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), have been used in cancer research extensively for at least the past ten years. And, for that matter, neither the luciferase nor the microPET is novel even in the field of cancer.
As for the people who are scared of the "HIV-like" viruses, I work with them everyday, and they scare the hell out of me too. In general, I think we (in the research community, and I include myself) are way too cavalier about using viral tools, when the potential for causing problems is so great and so often ignored.
The sad truth is that curing cancers in animal models is not that hard. Curing most cancer in humans much, much, more difficult. If even 1% of the animal model treatments that showed "great promise" had panned out, cancer would be cured many times over by now...
Well eother I am legend becomes real OR I become immortal OR I go sky diving there are only those options
and this treatment will only cost $10... per lymphocyte.
It's crazy how little people know about this stuff. This is a major breakthrough and I'm going to personally hold my breath until the conclusion of the human trial (if it gets there). I guess the average geek who posts here has little idea of how big this is. Fret not. I've got a foot in both worlds: love gadgets and anything electricity related, AND am a PhD student in Germany studying prostate cancer. *exhale*
So here it comes:
This breakthrough, if it works in humans, would be the equivalent of jumping from one of the first iterations of the computer (not personal computer) that took up a building, directly to an iMac today. A simple, elegant and very darn functional solution, all in one easy to handle package.
Side note here: The HIV virus has co-evolved with primates (apes, 99.9% same DNA as us) for a very long time, and has been genetically modified to do exactly what we want it to do, when, how, and where we need it to. HIV has excellent properties.
To give you an example: A lot of toxic elements in the periodic table kill people at minute quantities. It turns out though that they are part of humans at extremely small quantities and that life without them would not be possible. Same with HIV, yesterday a disease, today one of our best tools. I could go on, but then i'd get off topic and whatnot.
@gi08ees
If you are a PhD student studying cancer, then please explain to me how this is such a quantum leap forward? Using lentiviruses to modify ex-vivo lymphocytes, and then re-introducing them to the body to fight cancer, has been done for at least 15 years.
This article just brushes the surface of the research... and the comments are reflecting a misunderstanding of the process used in this study:
1. A virus that reproduces the same way HIV does (only as similar to HIV as we are to another mammal) is taken and its disease-causing DNA/RNA is cut out of its reproductive genes so scientists can insert their constructed gene(s) into it.
2. The T-Cells (the body's disease-fighters) have their DNA "reprogrammed" by the virus *outside* the body of the mice... the virus never enters the body of the mice.
2. The T-Cells are then put back into the mice where they follow their modified DNA instructions to identify and attack cancer cells. The T-Cells then just die out when they are done fighting the cancer (I'm pretty sure they can't even multiply on their own).
If you look at it that way, the worry about viruses is not so much of a problem... The viruses never enter the cancer patient, so there's no real risk of Zombies or Vampires.
Really all a person would have to be worried about is mutated T-Cells somehow reproducing and causing auto-immune diseases (attacking more cells than just cancerous ones). The chances of that are probably pretty slim, and the way these were engineered, they're visible on a PET-scan, so doctors can confirm that the modified T-Cells are dying after they do their job.
@Triskelionist Whoops... added a step in there but forgot to re-number... that second "2." should be a "3."
@ Laura June
The images above are bioluminescence imaging (BLI) not PET scan FYI.