mosquito.jpg (Photo : Reuters)
A research team in Guangdong Province said it discovered an oncolytic virus that can kill cancer cells without compromising healthy cells, Xinhua News Agency reported.
The virus, known as alphavirus M1, was found by the team led by Professor Yan Guangmei of the Zhongsan School of Medicine at Sun Yat-Sen University.
M1 was extracted from Culex pipiens mosquito living in the tropical province of Hainan, as published in the October edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America.
Lin Yuan, a co-author to the study, said that M1 is "highly tumor-selective." In treating human cancer cells in an in vitro setup, the virus provided a 90-percent inhibition rate. However, when applied in vivo, inhibition rate was only 50 to 60 percent.
The team said that M1 can curb the growth of cancer cells while leaving normal cells unharmed. It was tested on animals and was shown to be effective against cancer cells of the liver, bladder, colon and rectum, The Express Tribune reported.
According to the abstract of the published study, M1 works by "targeting zinc-finger antiviral protein (ZAP)-deficient cancer cells." Since many cancer cells lack an antiviral protein, they can be accurately destroyed by M1 without damaging normal cells, "which have more than enough protein for antiviral ZAP."
China is battling with a growing number of cancer cases brought about by unhealthy lifestyles and the worsening pollution problem. As many as 3.5 million new cases of the disease are reported annually, with 2.5 million Chinese people dying of cancer each year.
