CHICAGO (Reuters Life!) - A genetically engineered version of the cold virus helped flush dangerous prostate cancer cells out of hiding in mice, making them easier to see on imaging equipment, U.S. researchers said on Friday.
If the same approach works in humans, it could offer a way to catch prostate cancer as it begins to spread, they said.
Ultimately, the hope is to use the approach to kill cancer cells as part of a highly targeted, image-guided therapy.
"If we can catch the cancer before it invades other organs, we have a better chance to change the outcomes for these patients," Lily Wu of the University of California, Los Angeles, whose study appears in the journal Nature Medicine, said in a statement.
The finding offers an example of a much-anticipated new use of imaging technology known as molecular imaging, in which advanced diagnostic equipment can be used to target and treat cancers on the cellular level.
Conventional scans known as computed tomography or CT scans have a hard time spotting the earliest stages of prostate cancer as it spreads, or metastasizes, to hard-to-reach lymph nodes in the pelvis.
To help get a better look, Wu's team tinkered with the common cold virus so that it would only target prostate cancer cells.
Once inside the cancer cell, genes in the virus trick the cancer into making a protein that can be seen using positron emission tomography, or PET scans. The protein serves as a sort of a flare signal identifying the location of the cancer.
"The virus happens to be lymphotropic, which means it favors the lymph nodes. We were able to exploit its natural capability for this particular function," Wu said in a telephone interview.
Using genetic engineering, Wu said her team deleted all of the parts of the cold virus that make people sick. Next, they spliced in genes that make proteins that can be seen on PET scans, and they added in other genes that target prostate cancer cells.
"It's a prostate cancer-specific control switch," Wu said.
The result was a virus that specially looked for prostate cancer cells in the lymph nodes, which is typically the first stop cancer makes before it spreads to other organs.
