6 ms·

HIV virus used to turn white blood cells into cancer serial killers

112 points by ukdm 15y ago

sliceof314 15y ago
It's awesome to see one shitty thing in life being used to get rid of another shitty thing in life.
- nvictor 15y ago
  gold.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
> has been experimenting with using a harmless version of the HIV virus I wasn't aware such a thing exists. Anyone care to elaborate? Is it harmless or probably harmless?
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  It's certainly more harmless than most types of cancer.
- Dan_Nguyen 15y ago
  It's very harmless. Obviously there's a good number more technical details in here, but the gist of it is we take the parts of the HIV virus that makes it so good at proliferating, take out the genetic material that makes it harmful to our cells, and put in our own genetic information for the HIV-derived virus to inject into our target cells (known as a viral vector). Contrary to the mental connotation, it's a very harmless procedure that's often used even in BSL-2 labs. It's not to say that there aren't risks involved, but chances are you're not going to end up with AIDs. HIV-derived lentiviruses have been in use for a long time now and are a proven research tool. Coincidentally I just grew and harvested a new batch of lentiviruses this past Tuesday to treat cancer cells with shRNA.
- hvs 15y ago
  Nothing in life is without risk, and using HIV is no exception. However, in comparison to the risk of dying from leukemia, I think it is fair trade-off. More details: http://www.vcu.edu/oehs/chemical/biosafe/lentiviralvectors.pdf http://www.vcu.edu/oehs/chemical/biosafe/lentiviralvectors.p...
- rcthompson 15y ago
  In general, a virus consists of some genetic material and some method of getting that genetic material into a cell. You can swap out the virus's own genetic material for the genetic material of your choosing, and the delivery mechanism will still work. If you use HIV's "delivery system" to deliver genetic material that encodes a cancer-fighting protein, then you get cancer-fighting T-cells (a type of immune cell), since HIV targets T-cells. This is a massive oversimplification, of course. But anyway, the harmlessness of the viral vector depends on how efficiently you can separate the virus's delivery mechanism from its own infections genetic material.
ryusage 15y ago
The results of this sound amazing, but the article is frustratingly vague about what role the HIV virus plays. The interviews in the video don't mention it at all. I think most people will assume the patient is being infected with some variation of the virus, which seems rather scary, but it doesn't sound like that's the case. Since the emphasis is on genetically modifying white blood cells and injecting them back into the patient, which doesn't seem to need a virus as a delivery mechanism, I'm guessing the HIV's role is somewhere in the genetic modification?
- simcop2387 15y ago
  From what I've seen in other places what was done is, they took some of the patients T-Cells, and altered them. They did this by taking the RNA out of some HIVs and replaced it instead with a sequence to look for a specific antigen on the cancer cells. Then they took the HIVs and introduced them to the T-Cells and let them get infected. Since the original nasty RNA wasn't present, it won't replicate, but it will make some T-Cells that target the antigen on the cancer cells. After reintroducing to the patient, their immune systems then pick up from other signals that we don't full understand that some T-Cells are attacking this antigen, so it should make more of them.
jsmcgd 15y ago
This is very exciting. Anyone have any thoughts on the extensibility of this to treating other cancers?
- JunkDNA 15y ago
  The main issue is that for this to work, you need to know specifically what antigen you're targeting on the tumor cells. Think of the antigen as a unique tag that the immune system can use to differentiate cells (a "natural key" if you will). In the majority of cancers we haven't got a clue as to what we should use as for an antigen (though it's not an insurmountable probelem). However, with leukemia they can use CD-19 which is found exclusively on the surface of normal and cancerous B-cells. The last thing you want is an antigen that "looks" like something common, so CD-19 apparently fits the bill there as well. If you choose something non-specific, then the immune system can go after all kinds of other tissue that you don't want it to which could very likely kill the patient. All that being said, targeted therapy like this is probably the future of cancer treatment, but it's going to take tremendous effort to work out all the kinks. The immune system is ferociously complex, and is still poorly understood. However, it does have the advantage of being battle tested throughout evolution.
  - jsmcgd 15y ago
    Thanks for the reply. Just while you're here, I was wondering if I could ask another question. Am I right in thinking that they used the HIV virus to 'program' the white blood cells? And if so, in the future might it be possible to reprogram the cancer cells themselves? Perhaps the virus could 'patch' the broken/missing DNA? As you can tell, I'm horrifically ignorant on the topic but I would be grateful if you could indulge me :)
    - simcop2387 15y ago
      While it may be possible in theory to patch/fix the cancer cells, you'd need a virus that can target them specifically. In the case of using HIV here, it's because it's so efficient at getting into the immune system that it can be used as a vector to reprogram it. I've got to imagine that other "super viruses" could be used in a similar manner if they also target things so well.
hvs 15y ago
To clarify, the modified HIV virus in this case was used as a vector to deliver an antibody specific to the cancer onto a T-cell. The T-cell then goes on to destroy the cancer. HIV is one of the most efficient vectors for genes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_vector http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_vector http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentivirus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentivirus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimeric_antigen_receptor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimeric_antigen_receptor http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849 EDIT: Also note that the HIV vector is used to modify the T-cell before it is inserted into the human. The HIV is never actually inserted into the human (in this case).
- amitutk 15y ago
  Such viral vectors are routinely used in the lab to knock in a variety of genes in the cell. Vector is really the packaging. What was important in the study was the actual antigen which has packaged in the vector.
  - hvs 15y ago
    Without a doubt. I was only commenting on the HIV vector because there are so many that say, "What the hell?" when they hear "HIV."
    - zacharycohn 15y ago
      I know I did, until I read further into the article.
checoivan 15y ago
This is incredibly good news. So many researchers have been looking for a way to alter the inmmune system to target cancer, and it's surprising (but also makes sense) that the solution seems to be around HIV. It's this kind of out of the box thinking that pushes forward. And this: "this small trial involving just three patients was lucky to go ahead at all. The study was rejected by pharamceutical companies and the National Cancer Institute.". There's a very good talk on TEDMed from David Agus, about proteomics and cancer research. He bubbles up a similar concern about limitations of clinical trials. http://www.ted.com/talks/david_agus_a_new_strategy_in_the_war_on_cancer.html http://www.ted.com/talks/david_agus_a_new_strategy_in_the_wa...
- cma 15y ago
  His graph with heart disease, etc. is misleading; if we have made all those reductions in those areas and cancer deaths have remained the same, we have obviously made progress in cancer as well: since less people are dying of the other stuff, they have a greater chance of eventually contracting cancer.
  - checoivan 15y ago
    I agree you could argue that. But rather than crunching numbers, I think his point was to illustrate the state of some cancer treatments today. How despite of everything and all advances in medicine,we still need to make HUGE improvements in cancer. For example, pancreatic cancer. Prognosis is 20% 1 year survival and five-year rate is 4%. The best approved treatment so far is Gemzar, which was introduced in the early 80's. It's improve rate over other chemos was that it works in 23% of the patients, and improves the median survival to 5.65 months compared to 4.41 months with 5-flu chemo. Over 20 years and some of the best we got is +1.2 months and for only 23% of the patients. That's what he's pushing for and I support,improving this rates. In the end It's not about crunching numbers and making one disease or other look better tackled. It's about having hope for all this people and know something can be done, instead of staring at such a grim prognosis.
starpilot 15y ago
I'm the first to notice (or care)... "HIV virus"? Department of Redundancy Department?
- jmreid 15y ago
  Like GPS System? The acronym takes on a life of it's own as a 'word'.
  - duck 15y ago
    Is GPS System common? That looks and sounds weird to me.
    - jmreid 15y ago
      Sure, I've heard it said more than seen it written. Especially on news stories: "the car was tracked using the GPS system", etc.
- eavc 15y ago
  To most people, HIV is a disease. What's the more elegant alternative?
  - Sapient 15y ago
    I hear a lot of people call it "The HI virus".
    - swixmix 15y ago
      The most acceptable way may not be the most correct, but to correct it is more effort than it's worth.
- nerfhammer 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_Syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_Syndrome
cschmidt 15y ago
More comments here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2873604 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2873604
jhamburger 15y ago
"Good news, we found a way to treat your cancer." "Great! What is it?" "We're going to give you AIDS." "..."
- piotrSikora 15y ago
  You didn't read the article, did you?
artursapek 15y ago
I love the idea of disarming one virus and brainwashing it to kill another. I wonder how long it is before cancer is eradicated.
- jjtheblunt 15y ago
  Forever: cancers are not eradicable unless evolution and mutation and gene expression from adverse environments and ... are all eradicable. That's a different thing than assessing if a certain instance of cancer is itself curable in a certain afflicted host. Perhaps it is worth hoping for that.
ColinWright 15y ago
Also discussed at great length over here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2873604 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2873604 This is a good example of the same story, not cross-connected, getting split discussions.

112 points by ukdm 15y ago

sliceof314 15y ago

It's awesome to see one shitty thing in life being used to get rid of another shitty thing in life.

nvictor 15y ago
gold.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

> has been experimenting with using a harmless version of the HIV virus I wasn't aware such a thing exists. Anyone care to elaborate? Is it harmless or probably harmless?

sliverstorm 15y ago
It's certainly more harmless than most types of cancer.
Dan_Nguyen 15y ago
It's very harmless. Obviously there's a good number more technical details in here, but the gist of it is we take the parts of the HIV virus that makes it so good at proliferating, take out the genetic material that makes it harmful to our cells, and put in our own genetic information for the HIV-derived virus to inject into our target cells (known as a viral vector). Contrary to the mental connotation, it's a very harmless procedure that's often used even in BSL-2 labs. It's not to say that there aren't risks involved, but chances are you're not going to end up with AIDs. HIV-derived lentiviruses have been in use for a long time now and are a proven research tool. Coincidentally I just grew and harvested a new batch of lentiviruses this past Tuesday to treat cancer cells with shRNA.
hvs 15y ago
Nothing in life is without risk, and using HIV is no exception. However, in comparison to the risk of dying from leukemia, I think it is fair trade-off. More details: http://www.vcu.edu/oehs/chemical/biosafe/lentiviralvectors.pdf http://www.vcu.edu/oehs/chemical/biosafe/lentiviralvectors.p...
rcthompson 15y ago
In general, a virus consists of some genetic material and some method of getting that genetic material into a cell. You can swap out the virus's own genetic material for the genetic material of your choosing, and the delivery mechanism will still work. If you use HIV's "delivery system" to deliver genetic material that encodes a cancer-fighting protein, then you get cancer-fighting T-cells (a type of immune cell), since HIV targets T-cells. This is a massive oversimplification, of course. But anyway, the harmlessness of the viral vector depends on how efficiently you can separate the virus's delivery mechanism from its own infections genetic material.

ryusage 15y ago

The results of this sound amazing, but the article is frustratingly vague about what role the HIV virus plays. The interviews in the video don't mention it at all. I think most people will assume the patient is being infected with some variation of the virus, which seems rather scary, but it doesn't sound like that's the case. Since the emphasis is on genetically modifying white blood cells and injecting them back into the patient, which doesn't seem to need a virus as a delivery mechanism, I'm guessing the HIV's role is somewhere in the genetic modification?

simcop2387 15y ago
From what I've seen in other places what was done is, they took some of the patients T-Cells, and altered them. They did this by taking the RNA out of some HIVs and replaced it instead with a sequence to look for a specific antigen on the cancer cells. Then they took the HIVs and introduced them to the T-Cells and let them get infected. Since the original nasty RNA wasn't present, it won't replicate, but it will make some T-Cells that target the antigen on the cancer cells. After reintroducing to the patient, their immune systems then pick up from other signals that we don't full understand that some T-Cells are attacking this antigen, so it should make more of them.

jsmcgd 15y ago

This is very exciting. Anyone have any thoughts on the extensibility of this to treating other cancers?

JunkDNA 15y ago
The main issue is that for this to work, you need to know specifically what antigen you're targeting on the tumor cells. Think of the antigen as a unique tag that the immune system can use to differentiate cells (a "natural key" if you will). In the majority of cancers we haven't got a clue as to what we should use as for an antigen (though it's not an insurmountable probelem). However, with leukemia they can use CD-19 which is found exclusively on the surface of normal and cancerous B-cells. The last thing you want is an antigen that "looks" like something common, so CD-19 apparently fits the bill there as well. If you choose something non-specific, then the immune system can go after all kinds of other tissue that you don't want it to which could very likely kill the patient. All that being said, targeted therapy like this is probably the future of cancer treatment, but it's going to take tremendous effort to work out all the kinks. The immune system is ferociously complex, and is still poorly understood. However, it does have the advantage of being battle tested throughout evolution.
- jsmcgd 15y ago
  Thanks for the reply. Just while you're here, I was wondering if I could ask another question. Am I right in thinking that they used the HIV virus to 'program' the white blood cells? And if so, in the future might it be possible to reprogram the cancer cells themselves? Perhaps the virus could 'patch' the broken/missing DNA? As you can tell, I'm horrifically ignorant on the topic but I would be grateful if you could indulge me :)
  - simcop2387 15y ago
    While it may be possible in theory to patch/fix the cancer cells, you'd need a virus that can target them specifically. In the case of using HIV here, it's because it's so efficient at getting into the immune system that it can be used as a vector to reprogram it. I've got to imagine that other "super viruses" could be used in a similar manner if they also target things so well.

hvs 15y ago

To clarify, the modified HIV virus in this case was used as a vector to deliver an antibody specific to the cancer onto a T-cell. The T-cell then goes on to destroy the cancer. HIV is one of the most efficient vectors for genes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_vector http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_vector http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentivirus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentivirus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimeric_antigen_receptor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimeric_antigen_receptor http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103849 EDIT: Also note that the HIV vector is used to modify the T-cell before it is inserted into the human. The HIV is never actually inserted into the human (in this case).

amitutk 15y ago
Such viral vectors are routinely used in the lab to knock in a variety of genes in the cell. Vector is really the packaging. What was important in the study was the actual antigen which has packaged in the vector.
- hvs 15y ago
  Without a doubt. I was only commenting on the HIV vector because there are so many that say, "What the hell?" when they hear "HIV."
  - zacharycohn 15y ago
    I know I did, until I read further into the article.

checoivan 15y ago

This is incredibly good news. So many researchers have been looking for a way to alter the inmmune system to target cancer, and it's surprising (but also makes sense) that the solution seems to be around HIV. It's this kind of out of the box thinking that pushes forward. And this: "this small trial involving just three patients was lucky to go ahead at all. The study was rejected by pharamceutical companies and the National Cancer Institute.". There's a very good talk on TEDMed from David Agus, about proteomics and cancer research. He bubbles up a similar concern about limitations of clinical trials. http://www.ted.com/talks/david_agus_a_new_strategy_in_the_war_on_cancer.html http://www.ted.com/talks/david_agus_a_new_strategy_in_the_wa...

cma 15y ago
His graph with heart disease, etc. is misleading; if we have made all those reductions in those areas and cancer deaths have remained the same, we have obviously made progress in cancer as well: since less people are dying of the other stuff, they have a greater chance of eventually contracting cancer.
- checoivan 15y ago
  I agree you could argue that. But rather than crunching numbers, I think his point was to illustrate the state of some cancer treatments today. How despite of everything and all advances in medicine,we still need to make HUGE improvements in cancer. For example, pancreatic cancer. Prognosis is 20% 1 year survival and five-year rate is 4%. The best approved treatment so far is Gemzar, which was introduced in the early 80's. It's improve rate over other chemos was that it works in 23% of the patients, and improves the median survival to 5.65 months compared to 4.41 months with 5-flu chemo. Over 20 years and some of the best we got is +1.2 months and for only 23% of the patients. That's what he's pushing for and I support,improving this rates. In the end It's not about crunching numbers and making one disease or other look better tackled. It's about having hope for all this people and know something can be done, instead of staring at such a grim prognosis.

starpilot 15y ago

I'm the first to notice (or care)... "HIV virus"? Department of Redundancy Department?

jmreid 15y ago
Like GPS System? The acronym takes on a life of it's own as a 'word'.
- duck 15y ago
  Is GPS System common? That looks and sounds weird to me.
  - jmreid 15y ago
    Sure, I've heard it said more than seen it written. Especially on news stories: "the car was tracked using the GPS system", etc.
eavc 15y ago
To most people, HIV is a disease. What's the more elegant alternative?
- Sapient 15y ago
  I hear a lot of people call it "The HI virus".
  - swixmix 15y ago
    The most acceptable way may not be the most correct, but to correct it is more effort than it's worth.
nerfhammer 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_Syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_Syndrome

cschmidt 15y ago

More comments here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2873604 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2873604

jhamburger 15y ago

"Good news, we found a way to treat your cancer." "Great! What is it?" "We're going to give you AIDS." "..."

piotrSikora 15y ago
You didn't read the article, did you?

artursapek 15y ago

I love the idea of disarming one virus and brainwashing it to kill another. I wonder how long it is before cancer is eradicated.

jjtheblunt 15y ago
Forever: cancers are not eradicable unless evolution and mutation and gene expression from adverse environments and ... are all eradicable. That's a different thing than assessing if a certain instance of cancer is itself curable in a certain afflicted host. Perhaps it is worth hoping for that.

ColinWright 15y ago

Also discussed at great length over here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2873604 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2873604 This is a good example of the same story, not cross-connected, getting split discussions.