Scientists Are Turning Zika Virus Into a Weapon Against Brain Cancer

A devastating viral disease could actually help treat and prevent brain cancer in the future, suggests yet more research, published Tuesday in MBio. Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch and elsewhere successfully used a modified version of the Zika virus to selectively kill off certain stem cells that allow brain tumors to stay alive, at least in mice.

Primarily spread by mosquitoes, Zika had long been considered a minor nuisance. For decades, following its discovery in the 1940s, it sporadically appeared in Asia and Africa. And when it did show up, it only occasionally caused flu-like symptoms in those infected. But starting in 2015, massive outbreaks of Zika raged across South and Central America, and parts of North America. Most people who caught the virus this time around were left no worse for the experience, but it was soon discovered that Zika could sometimes cause severe birth defects in children whose mothers had contracted it during their pregnancy.

These congenital conditions vary from person to person, and can include blindness, deformed limbs, and microcephaly, or a smaller-than-normal head. But they all seem to stem from brain damage caused by the virus.

The researchers behind the current study, led by geneticist Pei-Yong Shi of the University of Texas Medical Branch, have been researching Zika virus and its close viral cousins for years now, hoping to better understand how and why the virus attacks the fetal brain. Unlike related viruses such as West Nile, Zika virus prefers to infect a certain type of cell found in the fetus known as a neural progenitor cell, their work has shown. And this infection kills off and prevents the normal growth of these cells into fully mature neurons.

Read more: https://gizmodo.com/scientists-are-turning-zika-virus-into-a-weapon-against-1829168441