Cancer vaccine: Cancer can be treated with ancient viruses

The remnants of ancient viruses that have been hiding inside human DNA for millions of years help the body fight cancer, reports with the BBC.

Photo: IStock

A study by the Francis Crick Institute has shown that dormant remnants of these old viruses wake up when cancer cells run amok. This inadvertently helps the immune system to target and attack the tumor.

The team wants to use this discovery to develop vaccines that could improve cancer treatment or even prevent it.

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Researchers have noticed a link between better lung cancer survival rates and a part of the immune system called B cells that cluster around tumors.
B cells are the part of our body that makes antibodies and is better known for their role in fighting infections like Covid.

What exactly they were doing with lung cancer remained a mystery, but a series of intricate experiments using patient samples and animal tests showed that they were still trying to fight the viruses.

“The antibodies appear to recognize remnants of so-called endogenous retroviruses,” said Professor Julian Downward, associate director of research at the Francis Crick Institute.

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Retroviruses have a clever trick in which they slip a copy of their genetic instructions onto our own genomes.

• More than 8% of what we think of as "human" DNA is actually viral in origin.
• Some of these retroviruses became an integral part of our genetic code tens of millions of years ago and are shared with our evolutionary relatives, the great apes.
• Other retroviruses may have entered our DNA thousands of years ago.

Some of these foreign instructions have been assimilated over time and serve useful purposes within our cells, but others are tightly controlled to stop them from spreading.

However, chaos reigns inside the cancer cell as it grows uncontrollably and the once tight control of these ancient viruses is lost.

These ancient genetic instructions are no longer capable of resurrecting entire viruses, but they can create enough virus fragments for the immune system to detect a viral threat.

"The immune system is tricked into believing that the tumor cells are infected and trying to destroy the virus, so it's sort of an alarm system," said Professor George Cassiotis, head of retroviral immunology at the Center for Biomedical Research.

The antibodies trigger other parts of the immune system to kill the "infected" cells - the immune system tries to stop the virus, but in this case it kills the cancer cells.

Prof Kassiotis says it's a remarkable role reversal for retroviruses, which in their heyday "could have caused cancer in our ancestors" because of the way they invade our DNA, now protect us from cancer, "which I find exciting" , as the professor adds.

A study published in the journal Nature, describes how this happens naturally in the body, but researchers want to amplify this effect by developing vaccines to teach the body to hunt for endogenous retroviruses.

“If we can do this, then it will be possible to think not only about therapeutic vaccines, but also about preventive vaccines,” said Professor Kassiotis.

The study was based on the TracerX study, which tracked lung cancer in unprecedented detail, and this week showed a "nearly endless" ability for cancer to develop. This prompted the researchers who conducted the trial to call for more attention to cancer prevention, as it is very difficult to stop.

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Dr Claire Bromley of Cancer Research UK said: “We all have ancient virus DNA in our genes, inherited from our ancestors. And this fascinating study has revealed the role it plays in the development of cancer and how our immune system can recognize and destroy cancer cells.”

She said "more research is needed to develop a cancer vaccine," but "nevertheless, this research adds to a growing body of research that will help scientists make this innovative approach to cancer treatment a reality."

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