US Pharm. 2018;43(5)(Specialty&Oncology suppl):16-18.
Adenovirus is a common virus that causes infectious diseases of the respiratory tract, eyes, and gastrointestinal tract in humans and animals. Researchers at Umeå University in Sweden study molecular mechanisms of infection in order to understand how adenovirus causes disease. The scientists, together with research groups from Germany, the United Kingdom, and Hungary, have discovered a new type of mechanism used by a rare adenovirus type to attack cells.
Human adenovirus type 52 (HAdV-52) is one of the few adenoviruses that have two different types of fiber proteins on the surface, which are “used” by the virus for the attachment to target cells. In collaboration with researchers from the Glycosciences Laboratory at Imperial College in London, the scientists have shown that the shorter fiber binds to an unusual type of carbohydrate-based receptor: polysialic acid (a long chain of repeated sialic acids).
Annasara Lenman, working with Niklas Arnberg, has subsequently corroborated that HAdV-52 binds to polysialic acid on target cells, and that this leads to infection. In collaboration with experts in structural biology at the University of Tübingen, the interaction between the short fiber and polysialic acid has been mapped at the atomic level.
“We knew earlier that the short fiber binds to sialic acid, but not how the underlying carbohydrate chain was constructed,” explains Lenman, a postdoctor at the Department of Clinical Microbiology and The Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden at Umeå University. “As polysialic acid is overexpressed on cancer cells in the brain and lungs, our findings could open new possibilities to use HAdV-52 for treatment for the corresponding types of cancer.”
