| Mouse mammary tumour virus (MMTV) antibodies in women with breast cancer
Transmission through milk of mammary cancer in mice was well described during the first half of the 20th century. In the 1940s, mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) was discovered and shown to be the cause of this transmissible malignancy. For the next 60 years, major progress was made on understanding the natural history of MMTV and its mechanisms of carcinogenesis. During the same years, there were many putative discoveries of a homologous breast cancer virus in humans. However, these discoveries generated many conflicting studies. For the past 10 years, laboratories have argued about whether MMTV DNA could be detected in human breast cancer tissue. It is never found at high levels, and there are homologies in the human genome that might account for low level detection. To complement these recent DNA studies, my colleagues and I decided to re-visit the possibility of MMTV antibodies in humans, using state-of-the-art immunoblot and immunoprecipitation methods, as well as four different MMTV cell lines to increase the likelihood of detecting cross-reacting human infection. We postulated that if MMTV antibodies are present in humans, they should be highest among women with breast cancer. Thus, we tested sera from 92 female breast cancer patients. We also interspersed dilutions of masked, positive control monoclonal MMTV antibodies and positive control sera from goats that had been inoculated with MMTV. The positive controls were detected as expected, but none of the 92 sera from women with breast cancer had evidence of MMTV antibodies. We concluded that MMTV antibodies are not present in American women with breast cancer.
Bibliographical reference:
James J. Goedert Viral Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, MD, USA
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