Creativity at the service of health Enlisting HIV to fight cancer, mimicking the living cell to transport medicines, using MRI to improve monitoring of a neurological disorder: researchers are never short of ideas to advance medical research. Enlisting the AIDS virus to fight cancer Its ability to generate mutant proteins could turn the HIV virus into a biotechnological tool for improving human health. Using this strategy, researchers introduced into the HIV genome a gene coding for a protein that activates anticancer drugs. Through HIV replication, they built up a library of variants of the original protein. Combining one of these proteins with an anticancer drug in cultured tumor cells made the drug effective at only 1/300th the normal dosage levels. PLOS Genetics August 2012 online 20 Towards improved monitoring of multiple sclerosis By using an innovative magnetic resonance imaging method that can map the distribution of sodium in the human brain, an international team has detected an abnormal accumulation of this chemical element in the brains of patients suffering from multiple sclerosis. In particular, the researchers observed a correlation between the development of the disease and the distribution of the sodium accumulation. Sodium MRI could thus help to shed light on the development of multiple sclerosis. Radiology July 2012 online Immune response mechanism to cytomegalovirus partly unveiled When infected by cytomegalovirus, certain kidney transplant patients produce a type of T lymphocyte that is able to trigger both an antiviral and an antitumor reaction. Researchers from France and the UK have succeeded in identifying one antigene involved in this dual immune response. Dubbed Endothelial Protein C Receptor, its distinctive feature is that it expresses itself on endothelial cells, which are the usual targets of the cytomegalovirus, and on carcinoma cells, including the skin tumors developed by immunodepressed patients. The discovery holds out promise for novel forms of antiviral and antitumor therapies. Nature Immunology August 2012 online A year at CNRS 2012
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