Lists, Thought ya'll might find this interesting. Enjoy!
Salud, Jules Mechanism of Herpes Infection Revealed, With Implications for Cancer Treatment ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- WESTPORT, CT (Reuters Health) Jul 18 - Herpes simplex virus 1 targets cells with an activated Ras signaling pathway, investigators in Canada report. Not only does this finding have ramifications for strategies to prevent HSV infections, it also suggests possibilities for using HSV to treat cancer. Dr. Patrick W. K. Lee and colleagues, of the University of Calgary Health Sciences Center, used for their experiments normal NIH-3T3 fibroblasts and fibroblasts transformed with oncogenes that activate the Ras signaling pathway. As reported in Nature Cell Biology for August, less than 5% of normal cells, when incubated with HSV-1, became infected. The transformed cell lines exhibited pronounced viral protein synthesis and virus output. Inhibitors of the Ras signaling pathway suppressed HSV-1 infection of ras-transformed cells. Further experiments demonstrated higher levels of phosphorylation of RNA-activated protein kinase in HSV-infected normal cells than in infected transformed cells. Phosphorylation was not detectable in cells not exposed to HSV-1, suggesting that this reaction is triggered by the virus. One implication, Dr. Lee told Reuters Health, is that "drugs that can downregulate the Ras pathway could conceivably be used to control virus infection." A second possibility, he said, is that "cancer-killing viruses" can be genetically engineered to target cancer cells with the most activated Ras pathway. "Normal cells need the Ras pathway to grow, but the Ras pathway is not active at all times," Dr. Lee said. "But in over 80% of cancers, this pathway is 'turned on' all the time." Dr. Lee noted that reovirus also uses the Ras signaling pathway. "So you can see a common theme emerging," he said. "We're looking at a major concept, possibly a universal concept." He and his colleagues are now evaluating other viruses to see if they also use the Ras pathway and can be used to target cancer cells. Nature Cell Biol 2001;3:745-750. -- The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. To join or quit silver-list or silver-digest send an e-mail message to: [email protected] -or- [email protected] with the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the SUBJECT line. To post, address your message to: [email protected] Silver-list archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]>
