FORCANCER - Moores Cancer Center

On the Trail
of Colorectal Cancer…
Is it possible that a common human virus could be
responsible for causing colorectal cancer, the third leading
cause of cancer deaths among both men and women?
UCSD Cancer Center
researchers asked this
question in 1994, launching
a small but intense line of investigation
that now may be paying off.
The team, led by C. Richard Boland,
M.D., Associate Director for Clinical
Research, has made recent discoveries
that point to the JC virus (JCV)
as a possible culprit in a large percentage
of cases.
Antibodies to JCV can be found in
80 to 90 percent of the population.
In healthy people it is considered a
harmless passenger.
Boland’s team has found that JCV
normally lives in the colon, but that
it is found in far greater amounts in
cancerous colon tissue than in normal
colon tissue.
“We know this JC virus character lives
in the neighborhood, and that he and
his friends are always found at the
scene of the crime, but we haven’t yet
proven that he’s the perpetrator.”
“What we have at this point is a very suspicious smoking
gun,” says Boland, a widely known and respected
Richard Boland and lab manager, Jennifer Rhees review research data.
authority in colorectal cancer. “We know this JC virus
character lives in the neighborhood, and that he and his
friends are always found at the scene of the crime, but
we haven’t yet proven that he’s the perpetrator.”
Closing In
The team is closing in, however. In the laboratory,
they have inserted the virus into normal colon cells
and watched as it perverted the orderly workings of
the cells.
“This tells us that JC virus, while widely considered
to be harmless, has the capacity in certain circumstances
to disrupt the internal mechanisms of normal
UCSD Cancer Center News
6