Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về sinh học được đăng trên tạp chí sinh học Journal of Biology đề tài: Infectious causes of cancer and their detection. | Journal of Biology Minireview Infectious causes of cancer and their detection Lucy Dalton-Griffin and Paul Kellam t Addresses Department of Infection University College London Cleveland Street London W1T 4JF UK. tThe Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute The Wellcome Trust Genome Campus Hinxton Cambridge CB10 ISA UK. Correspondence Paul Kellam. Email Abstract Molecular techniques for identifying pathogens associated with cancer continue to be developed including one reported recently in BMC Medical Genomics. Identifying a causal infectious agent helps in understanding the biology of these cancers and can lead ultimately to the development of antimicrobial drugs and vaccines for their treatment and prevention. In 1911 Peyton Rous used cell-free filtered extract of a chicken sarcoma to establish an association between cancer and an infectious agent - the Rous sarcoma virus. Almost 100 years later developments in the techniques used to detect microbial genomes and investigate their biological properties have led to a definitive role for viral bacterial and parasitic infection in human carcinogenesis. Recent estimates indicate that the average proportion of malignancies worldwide that could be avoided in the absence of an infectious agent is with this figure being higher in developing countries at 1 . The development of cancer is a complex multistage process that as outlined by Hanahan and Weinberg 2 can be grouped into six essential alterations to the cell physiology Figure 1 . These changes most likely occur by a progressive almost evolutionary mechanism of successive genetic changes. The main mechanisms by which chronic infection promotes cancer do not usually involve direct mutagenesis but instead are due to the complex interactions that occur between host and pathogen. In order for viruses to replicate and persist they often promote cell survival drive cellular proliferation and evade the immune system. Together these processes especially if
