UCLA scientists show HIV can target cancer

The UCLA team employed a two-step approach; firstly, the scientists used a version of HIV from which the viral pieces that cause AIDS had been removed. This allowed the virus to infect cells and spread throughout the body without provoking disease.

Secondly, the scientists stripped off HIV’s viral coat and redressed it in the outer suit of the Sindbis virus, which normally infects insects and birds. By altering the Sindbis coat, they reprogrammed the AIDS virus, which ordinarily infects T-cells, to hunt down and attach to P-glycoproteins – molecules located on the surface of many cancer cells.

The UCLA team is the first to prove that modified HIV will target and bind with P-glycoproteins.

“The disarmed AIDS virus acts like a Trojan horse – transporting therapeutic agents to a targeted part of the body, such as the lungs, where tumors often spread,” said Dr Irvin Chen, director of the UCLA AIDS Institute.

In order to track the carrier’s journey, the scientists added luciferase – the protein that makes fireflies glow – to the AIDS virus. They injected the camouflaged HIV into a vein in the mouse model’s tail and used a special optical camera to watch the carrier’s movement.

“The virus traveled through the animal’s bloodstream and homed straight to the cancer cells in the lungs, where the melanoma had migrated,” said Chen.

Although the researchers were excited at proving that HIV can be used to target cancer cells, Chen emphasized that the carrier must be further enhanced for safety and specificity before it can be tested as a gene-therapy method in humans.

“Our next step will be to test whether we can direct therapeutic genes to the precise location where cancer cells reside,” Chen said. “This approach offers many potential applications for controlling cancer and other diseases.”