Public release date: 17-Jan-2008
PITTSBURGH, Jan. 17 – A new strategy to hunt for human viruses described in this week’s issue of the journal Science by the husband-and-wife team who found the cause of Kaposi’s sarcoma has revealed a previously unknown virus strongly associated with another rare but deadly skin cancer called Merkel cell carcinoma. In the paper, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) researchers, Huichen Feng, Ph.D., Masahiro Shuda, Ph.D., Yuan Chang, M.D., and Patrick Moore, M.D., M.P.H., explain a nearly decade-long effort to harness the sequencing technology to identify the virus, which they call Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCV). While the research team emphasizes that their work does not prove MCV to be the cause of Merkel cell carcinoma, if the findings are confirmed, they may lead to new cancer treatment and prevention options.
“This is the first polyomavirus to be strongly associated with a particular type of human tumor,” said Dr. Moore, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and leader of the molecular virology program at UPCI. “Although polyomaviruses have been studied in relation to cancer development for years, the weight of scientific evidence had been leaning toward the view that these viruses do not cause human cancers.”
Polyomaviruses are a group of viruses that have been shown to cause cancers in animals for more than 50 years. But Dr. Moore noted that additional research is needed to determine what role, if any, MCV plays in human cancer development.
Clues from elsewhere in the biomedical literature point to the existence of MCV, which has a genetic structure that is closely related to an African green monkey virus found in Germany in the 1970s. Researchers have found antibody evidence from blood tests that indicates some 15 percent to 25 percent of adults are infected with the still undiscovered human relative of this monkey virus. If MCV turns out to be this long-sought infection, then more than 1 billion people worldwide could already be infected
“But again, look to the example of HPV,” said Dr. Moore. “Although up to 50 percent of sexually active young women are infected with HPV, a small proportion may actually get cervical cancer.”
Even if MCV is proven to play a role in MCC, Dr. Chang also cautioned that the virus is likely to be just a part of a much larger picture.
“Now we need to find out how it works,” she said. “Once the virus integrates, it could express an oncoprotein, or it could knock out a gene that suppresses tumor growth. Either way, the results are bound to be interesting.”
Ralph’s Note – Hmmm. 15 to 25 percent of adults infected with the monkey virus. By any chance could that have all come from the Polio vaccine? That was in the 1970’s Germany, I could only wonder what it is 2008 U.S.A..