Linda and friend, Isle of Skye
A typical
virus is, like, small – of the order of 100 nanometers (a nanometer is one
billionth of a meter). That means that a
typical drop of snot can contain gazillions of them; and will, if you don’t get
your flu shot.
Viruses get
a bad press, but there are plenty of good ones.
For instance, there are things called bacteriophages, which are viruses
that prey on bacteria, often bacteria we don’t want roaming around our insides. Like all viruses, they propagate by inserting
a copy of their DNA into a cell, where it engineers the creation of huge
numbers of baby viruses. Eventually the
cell bursts open (lises) to release a horde of identical hungry virus babies to
continue the process. If not properly
dealt with, some viruses can make you very, very sick. But some, it appears, can be useful. Possibly very, very useful.
It appears
that there are things called oncolytic viruses that – I presume with the proper
“engineering” - go out and kill tumors; at least melanoma, in mice. Scientists at U. Pittsburg are experimenting
with attaching a hormone (leptin) to such predatory virus in order to reactivate “exhausted”
cancer-fighting T cells. As I understand
it, these tumor-infiltrating immune cells lose their ability to kill because of
the harsh bio-environment of a growing tumor.
Leptin wakes them up and makes them strong again. Thus the cancer cell gets it two ways. To quote an old song, “if the virus don’t get
you, the T cell will”. As always, let us
hope.
By the way:
this research was sponsored by an NCI program cleverly known as Bugs to Drugs. Who sez biologists can’t be funny?
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