Prostate Cancer

Thus, the researchers said their discovery raises the possibility that increased susceptibility to viral infection may play a role in development of some cancers.

However, they emphasized that their findings by no means implicate the virus, dubbed XMRV, in causing The virus may well have flourished as a result of the failure of the defense mechanism; and other factors such as chronic inflammation may play a more direct role in the cancer.

“This finding was a big surprise because most of these endogenous viral genomes have undergone such mutation and deletion that they are incapable of giving rise to viruses any more.” Don Ganem The discovery of the new virus was made by an interdisciplinary research team led by Robert Silverman of Cleveland Clinic and HHMI investigators Joseph DeRisi and Don Ganem, both at the University of California at San Francisco.

A paper describing the findings was published on March 31, 2006, in the journal, Public Library of Science Pathogens.

The search for the new virus began when Silverman and his colleagues provided samples of a rare familial This mutation compromised the function of the enzyme produced by RNASEL, which normally shreds viral genetic material.

Infected cells carrying the sh...

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