The Burrill Report


Measles, it turns out, uses an ingenious biological mechanism to spread itself. By exploiting a receptor in cells present in the trachea, it causes its host to cough and spread the disease to others. Now researchers at Mayo Clinic think they might be able to enlist the disease in the fight against certain cancers that express this same receptor.

Measles, according to the researchers, may be the most contagious viral disease in the world. Despite the development of a vaccine, more than 10 million people each year become infected with measles and 120,000 die.
In a study published in the journal Nature, the researchers report that the measles virus uses a protein in host cells in the throat known as nectin-4 and then migrates through the body by invading immune cells in the lungs.

“The measles virus has developed a strategy of diabolic elegance,” says Roberto Cattaneo, principal investigator of the study and Mayo Clinic molecular biologist. “It first hijacks immune cells patrolling the lungs to get into the host. It then travels within other immune cells everywhere in the body.”

The infected immune cells carry the virus throughout the body and deliver it only to cells that express the nectin-4 protein. It turns out that nectin-4 is a biomarker of several types of cancer such as ovarian, breast and lung cancer.

Because measles targets nectin-4, the researchers say measles-based cancer therapy may be more successful in patients whose cancer express nectin-4. They believe that modified viruses could provide a less toxic alternative to chemotherapy and radiation.

The idea is already being tested. Clinical trials are under way testing the effectiveness of measles and other viruses in attacking ovarian cancer, glioma, and myeloma clinical trials at Mayo Clinic.


November 04, 2011
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-mayo_researchers_look_to_exploit_measles_to_treat_cancer.html