More recent freelance work for the Institute of Human Virology (IHV).
Interestingly, this time both articles were on cancer! What do viruses have to do with cancer? Well, as Dr. Robert Gallo, Head of the IHV mentioned, it wasn’t long ago that no one thought cancers had infectious causes, but now 20-25% of all cancers are thought to be associated with viruses.
As a result, on of the institute’s projects involves the search for an infectious cause of lung cancer.
The other article is about using a new technique to create anti-cancer peptides (peptides are small stretches of amino acids; longer stretches make up proteins).
All amino acids exist in two forms that are basically mirror images of each other. The form that’s easy to make (using bacteria engineered to create these peptides) is also the one that our body can break down more easily. So the scientists devised a new method to make the mirror image of these peptides, which last much longer in our bodies. The specific peptides they made are intended to prevent cancer by targeting MDM2 and MDMX. These two proteins, in turn, inactivate a key “tumor suppressor”, p53, that normally helps prevent the development of tumors.
As always, these articles are a little more technical, which makes them more challenging. But they’re also a lot of fun to write–I do love talking to the scientists about the ins and outs of their research, and it’s interesting to hear how they arrived at their methods and their results.