| By
Patricia Reaney
LONDON
(Reuters) - Viruses that cause the common cold could hold
important clues to ways of tackling cancer, Scottish scientists
said Tuesday.
About
one-sixth of the 200 different types of cancer, including
cervical cancer and some kinds of leukemia, are triggered
by viruses but how they do it is still a mystery.
Researchers
at Scotland's University of St. Andrews hope the human adenovirus
which causes colds and has similar properties to other viruses
will shed new light on those that cause cancer and open
up another line of attack against the disease.
``We're
using a cold virus to try to crack the problem because although
it doesn't cause cancer itself, it has features in common
with viruses that do,'' Professor Ron Hay, the head of the
research team, said in a telephone interview.
One
of the common features is a tumor suppressor gene, called
P53, which acts like a brake to stop cancerous cells from
dividing uncontrollably.
Cancer
starts when damaged cells replicate instead of destroying
themselves.
Cancer
viruses destroy p53 so that it can't stop the cell division,
which continues and goes on to cause cancer. The adenovirus
produces molecules that also damage p53 but without causing
cancer.
``The
reason adenoviruses don't cause cancer is that they kill
the cells at the end of the infectious cycle,'' Hay explained.
``In
viruses which cause cancer, you get a situation where p53
is destroyed, and there may be other viral proteins which
induce other changes in the cell to tell the cell to keep
replicating.''
Hay
and Professor David Lane, of the Cancer Research Campaign
in Dundee, are studying two adenovirus molecules to find
out how they stop p53 from working.
P53
is genetically altered in 80 percent of cancers but in the
other 20 percent of cancers the gene is still intact.
``The
idea is that if we can identify these similarities in cancer
cells we could identify targets for further drug development,''
Hay added.
If scientists
could stop p53 from being degraded or disabled, the damaged
cells would destroy themselves instead of replicating.
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