Supercharging Against Cancer:
Dr. Maya Shmulevitz wants to know exactly how it is that the human reovirus is able to infect and kill cancer cells.
“We want to make the human reovirus both more selective and more deadly to cancer cells,” says Dr. Shmulevitz.
A virologist by training, Dr. Shmulevitz is working side-by-side with Dalhousie Medical School’s Dr. Patrick Lee, a world-renowned scientist who was first to discover the cancer-killing abilities of this common benign virus.
Reovirus-based cancer therapies are showing promise in human clinical trials in the United States and Europe, but there is room for improvement in making the virus therapies more effective against cancer.
Dr. Maya Shmulevitz and her postdoctoral colleague, Dr. Paola Marcato, have already revealed some of the key mechanisms that allow the human reovirus to enter and destroy cancer cells.
“The virus takes advantage of a protein in cancer cells that helps it produce so many more copies of itself that the virus particles explode the cancer cell,” says Dr. Shmulevitz. “Not only are the new virus particles four times more virulent than the original virus, but now they are free to infect and destroy thousands more nearby cancer cells.”
Zero In On Cancer Cells
Now Dr. Shmulevitz is searching for proteins that will help the human reovirus zero in on cancer cells even more effectively. She is eager to work with the RNA-Interference (RNAi) Library, once it is installed following this year’s Molly Appeal campaign.
“The RNAi Library will allow us to screen proteins 20 times faster than we can now, at a much lower cost,” says Dr. Shmulevitz. “The library will provide unlimited opportunity to discover features of cancer cells that make them good targets for reovirus killing and perhaps other anti-cancer therapies.”
This year the Molly Appeal will raise funds to purchase Atlantic Canada’s first RNA-interference (RNAi) Library. This facility will give researchers 70,000 genetic tools they can use to determine the function of every gene in a cell.