Scientists at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) – at the Barcelona Science Park – and at the IDIBAPS Biomedical Research Institute lead a study in which they have designed a new strategy to achieve genetically modified viruses that selectively attack tumor cells without affecting healthy tissues. This technology is patent protected and ready for out-license.

Published today by the journal Nature Communications (doi:10.1038/NCOMMS14833), the study is part of Eneko Villanueva’s work for his PhD thesis and is co-led by Cristina Fillat, head of the Gene Therapy and Cancer Group at IDIBAPS, and Raúl Méndez, ICREA researcher at IRB Barcelona.

Conventional cancer treatment can cause undesirable side effects as a result of poor selectivity. To avoid them, it is important that new therapies efficiently remove cancer cells while preserving healthy ones. One of the new approaches in cancer therapy is based on the development of oncolytic viruses, that is to say, viruses modified to infect only tumor cells. In recent years several studies have focused on the development of genetically engineered viruses to maximize their anticancer effect; however, as their potency increases, so does associated toxicity. Limiting this effect on healthy cells is now the key to the application of this promising therapy.

An innovative and specific approach

In the study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from IDIBAPS and IRB Barcelona have developed an innovative approach to provide an adenovirus with high specificity against tumor cells. “We have taken advantage of the different expression of a type of protein, CPEBs, in normal and tumor tissues,” explains Raúl Méndez from IRB Barcelona.

CPEB is a family of four RNA binding proteins (the molecules that carry information from genes to synthesize proteins) that regulate the expression of hundreds of genes and maintain functionality and the ability to repair tissues under normal conditions. When CPEBs become imbalanced, they change the expression of these genes in cells and contribute to the development of pathological processes such as cancer. “We have focused on the double imbalance of two of these proteins in healthy tissues and tumors. On the one hand, we have CPEB4, which in previous studies we demonstrate to be highly expressed in cancer cells and necessary for tumor growth. And, on the other hand, there is CPEB1, which is expressed in normal tissue and lost in cancer cells. We have taken advantage of this imbalance to develop a virus that attacks only cells with high levels of CPEB4 and low levels of CPEB1, which means that it affects only tumor cells, ignoring healthy tissues,” says Méndez.
 

• More information on IRB Barcelona website [+]