Zika virus could treat childhood cancer, say Nemours researchers
Zika, a virus made infamous in Florida nine years ago through countless South America travel advisories about its potential dangers, may actually do some good.
A recent Nemours’ Children’s Health study on mice found the virus has the potential to shrink tumors from a rare and deadly form of childhood cancer called neuroblastoma. The cancer develops in nerve tissue, typically in the adrenal glands.
Each year, neuroblastoma accounts for only 6% of childhood cancer diagnoses, but high-risk neuroblastoma causes 15% of childhood cancer deaths. Fewer than half of neuroblastoma patients respond to traditional treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation, and families are desperate for an alternative.
In the study, published Jan. 9 in the journal Cancer Research Communications, Nemours scientists injected Zika virus into human neuroblastoma tumors grown in mice. The tumors shrank and, in mice given the highest dose of the virus, went away completely. The tumors didn’t grow back during four weeks of follow-up monitoring.
More research is underway to see if the treatment could be effective and safe on humans. The finding is a hopeful step forward, said the study’s senior author Dr. Tamarah Westmoreland, a pediatric surgeon and associate professor of surgery at Nemours Children’s Health in Orlando.
“When you sit with families and talk with them and their children about cancer and surgery, it can all be very scary,” Westmoreland said. “It’s research like this that … gives families hope.”
The study builds off several others that have explored Zika’s potential to treat cancer, including a 2018 Nemours study that found Zika could destroy neuroblastoma cells in a lab.
Neuroblastoma tumors appear to be vulnerable to the Zika virus in part because of their association with a protein called CD24, which has been connected to other cancers, too.
Washington University neuro-oncologist Dr. Milan G. Chheda, who was not involved in the study, praised its findings. Chheda has done research on Zika’s potential to treat a highly aggressive brain cancer, glioblastoma. His current work involves working on ways to genetically modify the virus to make it safer.
“The most exciting thing is it shows the relevance of the Zika virus across different types of cancers,” Chheda said.
Chheda and other experts cautioned that much more research is needed before it could be considered a viable treatment.
The mosquito-borne virus doesn’t typically cause symptoms in children and adults but can cause devastating deformities in developing fetuses. A major outbreak in 2015 and 2016 across the Americas and Caribbean infected millions and was responsible for at least 2,500 cases of a life-threatening brain deformity known as Zika associated microcephaly, according to the World Health Organization.
The virus eventually spread to the U.S., but there have been no locally acquired U.S. cases since 2017.
Though that particular outbreak is over, there are still tens of thousands of cases recorded each year worldwide and pregnant people are told not to travel to areas experiencing active outbreaks.
“It’s still to be seen whether or not this can be safely used in humans,” Chheda said.