HMTV - Breast Cancer

[Guest guest]

A web site with some very interesting material about the human

version of Mouse Mammary Tumor Virus ( MMTV)

http://www.autoimmune.com/HMTVGen.html

A quote

" HMTV - The Endogenous Human Homolog of MMTV "

>Dr. F. Garry, professor of Microbiology and Immunology

at Tulane Medical School, has discovered a retrovirus which is

also more than 95% identical to MMTV but which is endogenous

to humans. Dr. Garry has called his discovery Human Mammary

Tumor Virus, or HMTV.

>Dr. Garry has data showing that HMTV DNA sequences appear

in about 90% of the human breast cancer patients tested and

that the pro-viral DNA appears in the normal blood cells of

substantially all of these patients. Dr. Garry has also found the

pro-viral DNA of MMTV in the blood cells of approximately 15% of

healthy women and men tested. In addition, the data suggests

that the number of copies of the virus may be elevated in tumor

tissue compared to normal tissue from the same individual. This

last finding suggests that HMTV-related tumor formation may

result from insertional mutagenesis, and together the data

suggests that the 15% of women who have inherited the pro-viral

DNA of HMTV may represent a group in which about 90% of

breast cancer cases will ultimately arise.

>The implications of this finding are dramatic, because they

suggest that a blood test which detects the HMTV sequences

would be able to tell a woman and her physician whether she

was among the small group (about 15%) of women who were

very likely to develop breast cancer or among the large group

(about 85%) of women who were very unlikely to develop breast

cancer. The HMTV-positive women could be monitored

aggressively for signs of tumor development, and other

prophylactic regimens could perhaps be developed.