AIDS Virus Could Be Harnessed to Fight Cancer
Viruses are skillful mutants, changing their structures or outer proteins to evade the shifting natural defenses of their targets. (This is why you have to get a flu shot every year.) Now researchers in France report using one of the most proficient mutants, HIV, to fight another intractable disease: Cancer. Researchers at the French National Center for Scientific Research set out to study molecules that could improve the effectiveness of cancer drugs. As they explain in their paper, this process often involves screening for the desired trait using bacteria, but sometimes a molecule that works on a bacterium doesn't work the same way on a human cell. It would be better to start out with a human cell and screen new compounds right there. To speed the process of finding these new compounds, the team worked with HIV, taking advantage of its replication machinery and proclivity for mutating. Related ArticlesTHE FUTURE OF...