A once-promising discovery linking prostate cancer to an obscure retrovirus derived from mice was the result of an inadvertent laboratory contamination, a forensic analysis of tissue samples and lab experiments some dating back nearly a decade has confirmed.
The connection, which scientists have questioned repeatedly over the last couple years, was first proposed more than six years ago, when the telltale signature of the virus, known as XMRV, was detected in genetic material derived from tissue samples taken from men with prostate cancer.
Later studies failed to find the same signature, and researchers reported that while XMRV is a real, previously-undiscovered virus with interesting and useful properties, it is an infection of human prostate cancer cells in laboratories and not of prostate cancer patients.
Now, an analysis by a team of scientists led by researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Cleveland Clinic and Abbott has uncovered the complete story behind this contamination.
As described this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, the original association between XMRV and prostate cancer resulted from traces of XMRV that appear to have found their way into the prostate samples from other cells being handled in the same laboratory in 2003. These cells were also contaminated with the retrovirus.
"Everything arose from this presumed contamination event," said Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF and director of the UCSF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center.
Anatomy of a Contamination
XMRV became a focus of research after its genetic signature was first found in prostate cancer samples in 2006. Similar studies in 2009 also detected the virus among samples taken from people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome though both discoveries have now been called into question. The original publication rela
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| Contact: Jason Socrates Bardi jason.bardi@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco Source:Eurekalert |
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