Well, sometimes our enemies are really just friends in disguise… I had just barely gotten home from work this evening when I stumbled onto a really interesting article over at the NCI’s website. It’s about a virus called AAV2, which is known to infect anywhere from 80 to 90% of the US population, and has now been found to completely destroy a number of cancers in laboratory cultures, including breast, prostate, cervical and squamous cell…all while avoiding damage to healthy cells. In the article Dr. Craig Meyers, who was the head investigator for the study, says:

“We did the experiment 30 or 40 times with all different types of [HPV-related] cervical cancer lines: preneoplastic, …invasive carcinoma, HPV16, HPV18, HPV31…Every single time, they died at 6 days, like clockwork.” The 6-day time frame for cell death held true for all four cell types studied.

You can check out the rest of the article at the NCI’s Cancer Bulletin. It’s a good read, and the researchers go on to say that they are now focusing on how to quickly get this into clinical trials. I say kudos to fast moving research scientists in general…there are a lot of lives hanging in the balance.

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