A cancer causing virus may be in the wild now

by Palpatine

tl;dr: a research accident in Guangzhou, China may have released a cancer causing virus into the wild

What is happening:

1. In Guangzhou, China, 3 researchers in the second Sun-Yat sen memorial hospital caught cancer, all of them rare subtypes of cancer, all of them caused by the knockdown/knockout of the gene SMARCS1/INI1.
2. These are fast developing cancer that kills you in 3-5 months and there is no cure.
3. These researchers are working/have worked in the breast cancer research center of that hospital, which has a previous paper studying the mechanism of a virus (EBV) on cancer. The mechanism has been suspected to go though the cancer-suppressing gene INI1, so the related cancer mouse models often use (crippled) viral vectors that knock out INI1.
4. Rumor points to 6 more researchers in the same lab having rare types of cancer this year.
5. When the news broke out the hospital torn down the lab (yes, they hired construction workers to tear down all of lab rooms) and removed the electronic records of the patients, in a clear attempt to destroy evidence.

Background:

1. A crippled viral vector only has genes related to the splicing of the target gene, in this knockout INI1. A virus needs envelop to actually live outside of host cells and infect other hosts, but these viral vectors don’t have genes to produce its own envelop, as a safety precaution so these viral vectors can’t live in the wild. In the lab setting their envelop is provided by another plasmid in the production system.
2. There is always a small chance that such crippled vectors may recombine with genes from another virus, if that other virus infect the same cells. With bad luck, recombination may give the viral vector the much needed gene for producing its envelop.
3. How infectuous a virus is, is usually determined by its envelope, so the route of infection may be very different from the original viral vectors (which are AAV or LV, both difficult to transmit).
4. To prevent such accidents, dangerous viral vectors require high level bio-safety labs, and are used on immunosuppressed mice in a steril environment. It helps the cancer model to grow and prevents recombination of the viral vector with wild virus.
5. Bio-safety in china is abysmal, as we have learned from other leak incidents. Additionally, we know the lab in this hospital has only bio-safety level 1 (the lowest), and immunosuppressed steril mice to very expensive to buy and maintain. There is a lot of incentive for the assholes in charge to have the researchers use normal mice instead.

Speculation:

1. Regular carcinogens do not have the accuracy to pinpoint a specific cancer-suppressing gene.
2. Crippled viral vector may directly infect human only if you jab it into your body, so it’s unlikely all 3 (or 9) of them did this
3. The criplled viral vector that knockout INI1 must have recombined with some mouse virus that can also infect humans
4. The construction works wantonly destroying the lab has already spread the virus.
5. We do not yet know how infectuous this virus is, but once in the wild, it always has the potential to get better through mutation and recombination.

Links:

a few people asked for link so I’m copying my reply here:

> It’s a widespread rumor on the chinese web now. The hospital admitted that the 3 researchers got cancer (mp.weixin.qq.com/s/E19QE4GNxGXHDwfYuHVnfg), and they torn down the lab immediately (new.qq.com/rain/a/20231108A09ZL200) but refused to clarify on the subtype/genotype. The relatives of the patients posted their reports online but it was quickly taken down. See discussion here if you can read chinese www.zhihu.com/question/629403599 www.zhihu.com/question/629355942/answer/3280716958 but a few discussion threads have already disappeared so these may be gone soon.