Seek and Destroy: Virus attacks cancer, spares normal cells
By John Travis
A mosquito-borne virus isolated 5 decades ago in the Egyptian town of Sindbis could become the latest weapon in the battle against cancer. A seemingly harmless strain of the virus homes in on cancer cells and destroys them, according to a report in the January Nature Biotechnology.
Daniel Meruelo of New York University School of Medicine and his colleagues stumbled upon this unusual medicinal property of the Sindbis virus while seeking to exploit the virus for gene therapy. The original plan was to alter surface proteins of the virus so that it would bind to specific types of cells and shuttle therapeutic genes into them.