HIV Protein May Help Kill Cancer Cells

From Washington University in Saint Louis:

Cancer cells are sick, but they keep growing because they don't react to internal signals urging them to die. Now researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found an efficient way to get a messenger into cancer cells that forces them to respond to death signals. And they did it using one of the most sinister pathogens around — HIV.

"HIV knows how to insert itself into many different types of cells," says senior author William G. Hawkins, M.D., assistant professor of surgery and a member of the Siteman Cancer Center at the School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital. "A portion of the HIV protein called TAT can transport biologically active compounds into cells. TAT is small, but it can move massive molecules. You could almost hook TAT up to a train, and TAT would drag it inside a cell. So we've taken advantage of this ability." [...]

"Unlike most healthy cells, cancer cells grow very fast. So they are always on the verge of running out of natural ingredients like sugars, and mistakes are accumulating in their DNA," Hawkins says. "This results in signals telling cancer cells to die, but the cells don't quite have the permission they need to do it. Proteins like TAT-Bim can tip the balance in favor of death."

To further enhance the cancer-killing power of TAT-Bim and similar proteins under development, Hawkins and his colleagues are working on a technique that will concentrate them within tumors while sparing healthy cells.

H/T Science Blog.