HPV Virus stimulates cervical, head and neck cancer

According to a new study, Human Papillomavirus (HPV) - the most common sexually transmitted disease virus in human being has been found as another cause of the deadly cancer.

The study found that HPV virus stimulates the development of cervical, head and neck cancer by making internal molecular condition that makes the infected cells resistant to cancer therapy and even stimulate the cells to develop more cancer cells.

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This new research has been conducted by a team of scientist of University of California, Los Angeles in the leadership of Dr. Matthew Rettig, researcher at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Centre.

According to Dr. Matthew, the new study has shown a new direction of research and developing new therapies that target the cell-signalling pathway.

The researches were experimenting on cells in culture and in animal models while the findings came out coincidentally, cited Rettig. The team were screening different cancer cell types for hypoxia-induced activation of the cell signalling pathway that promote survival, drug resistance and spread of cancer, when they came across that only the cancer cell types that were HPV-positive had heightened activation of the NF-B pathway, Mathew said by adding that those cervical and head and neck cells were not highlighted which did not have heightened activation of the NF-B pathway.

The appearance of the virus indicates that it regulates the expression of genes that control all the characteristics of hypoxic tumours, added Rettig.

Now this researcher team will try to confirm the findings deeper by experimenting on the broader scale that will help them to understand the potential correlation of hypoxia and activation of the cell-signalling pathway in human.

According to scientists, this research may be proved crucial for the treatment of cervical, head and neck, and male and female genital cancer as 90 to 98 percent of cervical cancers are caused by HPV that is the second most common cancer in women worldwide.

Besides, it is also a major factor of other sexually transmitted diseases in women like vulvar, vaginal and other female genital cancers, while in male it hold on anal, penile and other male genital cancers.

The study has been published in the latest issue of the journal ‘Cancer Cell’.