Scientists use new ‘computational cell biology’ to kill cancer cells by making them sick

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Scientists use new ‘computational cell biology’ to kill cancer cells by making them sick

   One doesn’t often think of cancer cells themselves being vulnerable to infections, but a team of scientists in Ottawa, Ontario is using advanced mathematical modeling to engineer viruses that will infect and destroy cancer cells. According to a paper published Friday in Nature Communications, the team uses predictive modeling to investigate how treatment techniques and genetic modification might allow cancer-killing (oncolytic) viruses to overcome cancer cells’ anti-infection defenses and kill them.

  Dr. Mads Kaern, a medical faculty member and the Canada Research Chair at the University’s Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology, and Dr. John Bell, a senior biologist with the Ottowa Hospital Research Institute and professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine, were lead authors on the report, which details how the team used mathematical modeling to create techniques to render cancer cells highly vulnerable to infection by oncolytic viruses while leaving healthy tissue untouched. The modified viruses zero in on the very thing that makes cancer cells so destructive — their potential to proliferate and grow explosively and unchecked, and blocks it.

  These viruses tend to replicate better in cancer cells,” said Kaern to Raw Story, “because cancer cells tend to grow and divide more with an increased metabolism. The viruses are sort of exploiting that by replicating more aggressively, specifically in cancer cells.”

  The trick, Kaern said, is to engineer viruses that do that, but with minimal harm to surrounding healthy cells. The engineered viruses are built to not propagate in healthy tissues. In terms of cancer cells, however, it only takes one oncolytic virus making contact with one cancer cell to begin the propagation process….

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