AIDS and cervical cancer
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008Gizmorama -
“The Cutting Edge of Science Fact and Science Possibilities”
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Good Morning,
Todays’ article discusses how Protein might be
important in causing MS. Hope You find it
enlightening. Have A Good Day!
Until Tomorrow,
Erin
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AIDS and cervical cancer
discoveries scoop Nobel prize
Two virologists who discovered HIV and a third who
showed that a virus causes cervical cancer share this
year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Two French researchers, Luc Montagnier and Françoise
Barré-Sinoussi, share half the prize for discovering,
in 1983, that the virus now known as HIV causes AIDS.
The other half of the prize goes to Harald zur Hausen,
a German, for discovering that the human papilloma
virus causes cervical cancer.
The award for HIV discovery is controversial because
for many years, Montagnier and his colleagues at the
Pasteur Institute in Paris were locked in a wrangle
with Robert Gallo of the US National Institutes of
Health over who actually discovered the virus.
The Nobel citation mentions Gallo’s contributions,
but settles the dispute once and for all by declaring
the French duo to be the true discoverers of the virus,
just two years after the first cases of AIDS were re-
ported in 1981.
Their discovery rapidly paved the way for tests to
diagnose the disease in patients and screen blood
donations for viral contamination.
And by establishing at a molecular level how the virus
wrecks the immune system by infecting CD4 cells, the
duo enabled rapid development of today’s antiretroviral
drugs that combat the virus and stop infected people
dying of the disease.
“Never before has science and medicine been so quick
to discover, identify the origin and provide treatment
for a new disease entity,” says the Nobel prize cita-
tion.
Drug breakthrough
Montagnier and Barré-Sinoussi traced the virus after
studying samples of white blood cells that clumped
together in the swollen lymph nodes of patients.
Lurking in these CD4 T helper lymphocytes, they de-
tected activity of reverse transcriptase, the enzyme
which enables the virus to multiply itself.
And through their microscopes, the duo observed viral
particles budding out from the surface of infected
cells.
Although it resembled a virus isolated by Gallo called
HTLV-1, the French virus initially called lymphadeno-
pathy associated virus turned out to be HIV-1.
In 1985, an international virus taxonomy consortium
chose to name the virus Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1,
or HIV-1.
Once it had been discovered, several groups proved that
the virus causes AIDS. The first drugs arrived in 1987,
and the race is now on to get the current antiretroviral
drugs to all patients who need them, especially in poor-
er countries in Africa.
None of this would have been possible had it not been
for the discovery of the virus itself by Montagnier,
now at the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Pre-
vention in Paris, and Barré-Sinoussi, still at the
Pasteur Institute.
Persistent search
In Germany, meanwhile, Harald zur Hausen of the German
Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, is credited with
establishing the link between infection with the human
papilloma virus (HPV), which causes genital warts, and
cervical cancer.
His discoveries have led to development of two com-
mercial vaccines to prevent cervical cancer: Gardasil
and Cervarix.
Zur Hausen began his quest to prove that viruses caused
cervical cancer in the 1970s, despite the scepticism of
his peers.
After combing through the DNA of cervical cancer cells
from biopsies for 10 years, he eventually found traces
of HPV genetic material. In 1983, he established that
a strain called HPV-16 had infected the cells.
A year later, he cloned HPV-16 and HPV-18 from patients
with cervical cancer. Subsequently, the viruses have
been found in 70% of cervical cancer biopsies through-
out the world.
First cancer vaccine
More than 5% of all cancers are caused by these viruses,
and HPV is the most commonly sexually-transmitted agent,
afflicting 50 to 80% of the world population.
Subsequently, zur Hausen unravelled the complex molec-
ular route by which HPV causes cancer, enabling develop-
ment of the vaccines that provide 95% protection from
the high-risk HPV-16 and HPV-18.
“He was very much against the prevailing thought at the
time, but doggedly pursued his theory that a virus was
responsible,” says Nicholas Kitchin, medical director
at Sanofi.
“Eventually, he proved it, not just identifying that
HPV was the cause, but allowing others to take that
forward to development of the world’s first true
cancer vaccine,” he says.
So far, says Kitchin, Gardasil has been licensed in
105 countries and 30 million women have received it.
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Protein might be important in causing MS
U.S. medical scientists say they have discovered a par-
ticular protein, TREM-2, might be a major contributor
to the development of multiple sclerosis. TREM-2, which
helps keep immune cells quiet, has been found to be more
abundant in the spinal fluid of patients with multiple
sclerosis, thereby boosting suspicion it might contribute
to the formation of the disease. Researchers at the
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
said they discovered the extra TREM-2 was not in the
right place to reduce aggression in immune cells, and
that finding, they said, might eventually lead scientists
to new pharmaceutical targets for MS prevention.
“Previously, TREM-2 had only been seen on the surface of
immune cells; in the new study, we found it floating free-
ly in spinal fluid,” said Dr. Laura Piccio, the study’s
lead author. “This is only speculation for now, but
these ‘free agent’ copies of TREM-2 could be making it
harder for the TREM-2 that is attached to immune cells to
keep the cells’ aggressiveness under control.” The re-
search is reported in the journal Brain.
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Study: Insecticide decimates tadpoles
A U.S. study suggests the common insecticide malathion
can decimate tadpole populations, killing them indirectly
at doses too small to kill them directly. University of
Pittsburgh researchers wanted to determine the environ-
mental impact of the use of malathion — the most popular
insecticide in the United States. The scientists discover-
ed gradual amounts of malathion that were too small to
directly kill developing leopard frog tadpoles instead
sparked a biological chain of events that deprived them
of their primary food source — bottom dwelling algae, or
periphyton, which tadpoles eat. “As a result, nearly half
the tadpoles in the experiment did not reach maturity and
would have died in nature,” the researchers said. The re-
sults of the National Science Foundation-funded research
builds on a nine-year effort by Associate Professor Rick
Relyea to determine whether there is a link between pes-
ticides and the global decline in amphibians. Relyea said
amphibians are considered an environmental indicator
species because of their sensitivity to pollutants and
their deaths might foreshadow the poisoning of other,
less environmentally sensitive species — including
humans. Relyea and study co-author Nicole Diecks report
their research in the journal Ecological Applications.