What Kills Breast Cancer Cells? It Could Be This Non Lethal to Healthy Cells Virus Say Scientists at Penn State University In Vitro Vs In Vivo

What Kills Breast Cancer Cells? It Could Be This Non Lethal to Healthy Cells Virus Say Scientists at Penn State University and What is In Vitro Vs In Vivo

Could
Virus Be Cancer Killer? Maybe:

1. Non Disease Causing Virus Kills Breast Cancer Cells ( In Laboratory, see below)
   
2. Penn State Researchers Tested the Virus on 3 Different Breast Cancer Types
   
3. Used Adeno-associated virus type 2 (AAV2) a virus that regularly infects humans but causes no disease.
   
4. AAV2 does not affect healthy cells
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

It sounds like a miracle and maybe it is but like everything in science and medicine it comes with a lot of caveats. Firstly, things that work in the lab (in vitro) frequently are a wash in the body (in vivo).



"Craig Meyers, professor of microbiology and immunology, said breast cancer is problematic to treat because of its multiple stages. "Because it has multiple stages, you can't treat all the women the same. Currently, treatment of breast cancer is dependent on multiple factors such as hormone-dependency, invasiveness and metastases, drug resistance and potential toxicities. Our study shows that AAV2, as a single entity, targets all different grades of breast cancer."






"Cells have multiple ways of dying. If damage occurs in a healthy cell, the cell turns on production and activation of specific proteins that allow the cell to commit suicide. However, in cancer cells these death pathways often are turned off, while the proteins that allow the cell to divide and multiply are stuck in the "on" position. One way to fight cancer is to find ways to turn on these death pathways, which is what researchers believe is happening with the AAV2 virus".



According to the Wikipedia, Adeno-associated virus (AAV) is a small virus which infects humans and some other primate species. AAV is not currently known to cause disease and consequently the virus causes a very mild immune response. AAV can infect both dividing and non-dividing cells and may incorporate its genome into that of the host cell. These features make AAV a very attractive candidate for creating viral vectors for gene therapy, and for the creation of isogenic human disease models. Recent human clinical trials using AAV for gene therapy in the retina have shown promise.

Virus kills breast cancer cells in laboratory





Meyers and colleagues have been working on this for a while since here is an article from 2005.

AAV2 Has Great Potential as Anti-Cancer Agent

Adeno-associated virus type 2 infection activates caspase dependent and independent apoptosis in multiple breast cancer lines but not in normal mammary epithelial cells