The virus Zika could destroy brain tumors

Health 7 September, 2017


bashta/epictura

Published the 06.09.2017 to 07h49



A A


Keywords :

zikacerveaugliome

Virus feared, Zika could become a weapon against cancer. Researchers from the universities of Washington and San Diego (United States) suggest that the infectious agent responsible for microcephaly in the fetus could destroy effectively the brain tumors. They present their results in The Journal of Experimental Medicine.

The destructive power of the virus, Zika was discovered last year during the epidemic in Brazil. Thousands of pregnant women infected with the virus have given birth to children with abnormalities and serious neurological. Able to stay in the brain of the fetus, the virus Zika is propagated in neurons and neuronal stem cells, which causes their death, and interrupts brain development.

A devastating process that could prove life-saving in patients with glioblastoma, the most common brain tumors and one of the most lethal cancers. In the two years after the diagnosis, most of the patients die.

Outwit treatment-resistant

Resistance to treatment is one of the causes of this great mortality. In fact, the drugs and techniques current fail to destroy a particular type of cells, called ” stem cells of glioblastoma “, responsible for the maintenance and proliferation of the tumor.

But these cells do not appear to resist the virus Zika. In the laboratory, the pathogen was able to infect stem cells of glioblastoma obtained from patients. A success found during testing in a twenty guinea pigs of laboratory.
Two weeks after having been infected with Zika, the mice exhibited smaller tumors than those treated with a placebo. Mice contaminated have also lived longer than control animals.

According to the research team, chemotherapy and infection by the virus Zika have complementary actions. The standard treatment eliminates the bulk of the tumor, and the virus Zika attack the remaining cells that are causing the cancer. “We believe that Zika may one day be used in combination with current therapies to eradicate all of the tumour,” says the Pr Milan Chheda, a professor of neurology at the university of Washington.