Could Zika Be Used As A Cancer Treatment?

This Virus Causes Damage in Babies' Brains. Now, It May Fight Brain Cancer in Adults.

Transcript

00:00The aggressive brain cancer, glioblastoma, has proven very difficult to treat with standard

00:05cancer treatments.

00:06But now, scientists think they might have stumbled upon a new solution, the Zika virus.

00:18Glioblastoma is difficult to treat because it transforms normal brain cells into stem

00:22cells, which can multiply pretty much indefinitely.

00:25So if most of the tumor is removed, even if there's one cell left, there's a high chance

00:30that it will regrow and come back.

00:33But the Zika virus might offer a new way to target these hard-to-treat cells.

00:38It turns out the Zika virus uses a special molecular key to interface with normal brain

00:44cells but also brain cancer cells.

00:47This molecular key is called an integrin, and it sits on the surface of the virus and plugs

00:53into the cells it's going to infect, in essence.

00:57So there's a lock that this key fits into on every different type of brain stem cell, from

01:03healthy ones to cancerous ones.

01:05This key is made up of two components.

01:08One half is called alpha-V, and the other half is called beta-5.

01:12The alpha-V component appears on all different sorts of brain stem cells, from healthy to

01:18cancerous, but the beta-5 component is fairly unique to cancerous cells.

01:24So the Zika virus actually prefers to infect cancerous brain cells over normal ones.

01:30Scientists think they can hack into this tendency of the virus to trick it into only affecting

01:36the cancerous brain cells and leaving healthy brain cells alone.

01:40So far, this strategy has seemed promising in mouse studies, but it has a long way to go

01:45before it reaches human cancer patients.