The virus HTLV 1 causes a rare leukemia in some people. This was declared by a team of researchers led byImperial College London and Kumamoto University in Japan, which used single cell analysis to show how the virus overactivates them T cells, key immune cells in our blood, causing them to become cancerous. This dynamic offers clues as to how to prevent this from happening.
The results of the Research have been published in the scientific journal Journal of Clinical Investigation.
HTLV 1: this is what the research tells about it
The rare cancer, called adult T-cell leukemia / lymphoma (ATL), develops in about 5% of people infected with HTLV 1 virus, but only several decades after the initial infection. HTLV 1 specifically infects T cells and transforms them into leukemic cells, but the time delay has made it extremely difficult to determine how this transformation occurs.
ATL can progress slowly or aggressively, but there is no standard treatment for high-grade ATL, and the condition has a high rate of relapse after treatment with chemotherapy and antiviral drugs.
The research team’s findings revealed that the virus hijacks the activation mechanism of T cells, causing them to persist at a high level of activation, gradually becoming malignant.
The research co-director, Professor Yorifumi Satou, ofKumamoto University, is a virologist who studies HTLV 1. He said: “While only a small percentage of people with HTLV 1 viral infections continue to develop adult T-cell leukemia / lymphoma, there are an estimated five to ten million carriers of the virus worldwide, and in some areas. it is endemic, for example there are about a million cases in Japan ”.
Co-lead researcher Dr. Masahiro Ono, of the Department of Life Sciences of the Imperial, is an immunologist and cell biologist who brought his knowledge of T cells to the project, said: “There is therefore a great need to understand how the virus turns our T cells against us in the progression to cancer. Our work highlights a key mechanism for this change and provides us with new directions to look for ways to interfere with the process, potentially preventing the development of cancer. “
Leukemias are cancers that originate from blood or bone marrow cells, characterized by a large increase in the number of abnormal white blood cells. T cells are special types of white blood cells that are critical in fighting invaders, such as viruses and bacteria.
The HTLV 1 virus inserts itself into a type of T cell and, to begin with, remains there in a “latent“, Without releasing new viral particles or causing adverse effects. For many of these virus carriers, this never changes, but in about five percent of carriers, after decades of latency the virus awakens and affects the functioning of T cells.
The team studied more than 87,000 T cells from virus-free donors, healthy virus carriers and patients with ATL. They sequenced RNA (a simpler form of DNA) from these cells to find out how the virus and T cells were interacting.
Scientists revealed that, in people who progressed to ATL, HTLV 1 made infected T cells highly activated and hyperreactive, causing them to produce excess proteins that keep them proliferating and helping them avoid other parts. of the immune system which would usually remove rogue cells.
The team thinks these changes made overactive T cells more vulnerable to DNA damage, for example through chemicals or radiation, accelerating their transition to a cancerous state.
Further studies on the processes involved, the authors say, will lay the groundwork for potential new treatment options. Dr. Ono explained: “Eg, Chronic activation of T cells may be disrupted by molecules that block the signaling pathways that tell cells to activate. Alternatively, treatments could target proteins created by activated T cells to help them proliferate. “
It is estimated that 300,000 new cases of leukemia are diagnosed globally each year (2.8% of all new cancer cases). It has been estimated that in Western countries chronic myeloid leukemia constitutes the most frequent type of leukemia with 25% of cases, chronic myeloid leukemia accounts for 20% of cases and acute myeloid leukemia accounts for 20% of cases.
In 2021, 61,090 people are expected to be diagnosed with leukemia.
The 5-year relative survival rate for leukemia more than quadrupled, from 14% in whites from 1960 to 1963 (the only data available) to 66.4% for all races from 2010 to 2016. From 2010 to 2016, overall five-year relative survival rates were 72.1 percent in total, 92.5 percent for children and adolescents under the age of 15 and 94.4 percent for children under the age of 5 LMA – 29.8 percent overall and 70.6 percent for children and adolescents under the age of 15 years LLC – 88.6 percent LMC – 71.7 percent.
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