Anyone know the outcome of Silverman talk at conference?

Anyone know the outcome of Silverman talk at conference?

i am wondering if he has come out in support of his past research or if he is abandoning it for the contamination theory. (sure hope not!) anyone heard what he said yesterday? hints welcome, too! -- rrrr
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http://www.retrovirology.com/content/8/S1/A241

Human infection or lab artifact: will the real XMRV please stand up?

Meeting abstract

Xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) was first identified in 2005 in a study of human prostate cancer patients with genetic variants of the antiviral enzyme, RNase L. Subsequent investigations in North America, Europe and Asia have either observed or failed to detect XMRV in patients [prostate cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome-myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS-ME), immunosuppressed with respiratory tract infections] or normal, healthy control individuals. Among the confounding factors are the potential for lab contamination with similar or identical viruses or viral sequences originating in mice. In some studies, relatively contamination-resistant methods (e.g. IHC, FISH, and antibody detection) suggest that either XMRV or a similar type of virus is present in some patients. Evidence for and against genuine infections of humans with this intriguing virus (and/or related viruses) will be discussed.

Nope, I have read no reports.

My 2 cents: I find it highly unlikely he would abandon his research, he has also been publishing more XMRV papers the last months.

I don't know anything either, but i guess if he were to not "believe" in XMRV anymore there would be less need for confidentiality. Of course he would probably not really enjoy going around telling the world that he was wrong, but i'm quite sure somebody else would spread the information.

Also, at least if he was sure that XMRV is just contamination (as opposed to being arfraid that it might be contamination, but might also not be contamination), he probably would like to say that it is contamination as soon as possible, to say: "Hey, I was wrong, but I addmitt that" in order to minimize damages. Now, if he believes XMRV is the real deal, he has no reason to say that "it's all due to contamination". And if he doesn't know, he probably has no reason to say that "it's all due to contamination" either, because what if it pans out as real? Then he would seem pretty ridiculous.

Anyway, my feeling, due to his published papers, is that he believes in XMRV - although I think that his role in this meeting was to present the evidence for and against XMRV in an objective and balanced way.

i believe that he still believes in xmrv, too. but i sure wish i could hear what he said at that recent talk. do they make the talks available to the public?

Not that I know of. They published all the abstracts for free and that's it I think (I am still glad they did though, they could have given us nothing).
I was hoping for a larger Silverman abstract, but it was only a few sentences unfortunately.

I really think that Silverman's role in those lectures is to give an objective overview, and therefore, his abstract would not say much to those who are already familiar with the subject - and I think that his lecture would also not say much to such people, because he would probably say nothing new and also would talk in a way that seems objective, without expressing his opinion about whether XMRV is the real deal or not (perhaps, not sure but perhaps, one can try to discover Dr. Silverman's own opinion by listening to the tone in which he says stuff - which stuff he emphasizes and which stuff he does not emphasize).

I think that it is important for Silverman to just remind people that he found the virus integrated.

It's funny how this just gets swept under the carpet by people intend on arguing contamination.

Kim, S., Kim, N., Dong, B., Boren, D., Lee, S., Das Gupta, J., Gaughan, C., Klein, E., Lee, C., Silverman, R., & Chow, S. (2008). Integration Site Preference of Xenotropic Murine Leukemia Virus-Related Virus, a New Human Retrovirus Associated with Prostate Cancer Journal of Virology, 82 (20), 9964-9977 DOI: 10.1128/JVI.01299-08

There is a Silverman paper online that has a very similar abstract to his conference abstract, so I imagine that his presentation will be along these lines:
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/av/aip/432837/
http://downloads.mts.hindawi.com/MTS-Files/AV/papers/XMLV/432837.v2.pdf

It's an overview of the research to date.

Yes, but there was the argument by the contamination side that they found XMRV integrated in exactly the same site in a cell line. So, if i remember correctly, integration in 2 sites was contested. I don't know if that argument has now been invalidated or not. They found a paper that demonstrated integration in exactly the same site in another virus.

I think we would know by now...because if he had said contamination was a problem in his work - that could have implicated the WPI and I think that would have been news. My guess is that, as the saying goes, no news is good news, and that he has not concluded anything about his personal research into XMRV (ie contamination) and that he simply presented the pro's and con's of both sides.

the problem is that another researcher took a look at that in another way and concluded Silverman's findings were probably due to contamination...so the picture is not clear...I think the ball is in Dr. Silverman's court and he is working on this issue but apparently there's no conclusion as of yet.

Thanks for clarifying Cort.

virus rumors

We heard rumors from CROI 2011 that Silverman was about to retract his findings on XMRV. These were just rumors. We've heard rumors that Harvey Alter was about to change his position. Through an official spokesperson he said his results were independent of the others. He had no plans to retract. Frank Ruscetti has just reiterated that the pictures of immature virus show they were not simply finding contamination, but active infections. (This only disposes of some meanings of contamination. I've never been sure exactly how many meanings are in use. This word seems to have magical properties.)

Meanwhile, Dusty Miller has expressed the view that he didn't find the second piece of the puzzle he was looking for in samples from those nude mice because he didn't have the right samples or luck. He's sure it is there, despite failure to detect. An amazing parallel to competing claims.

These mice have crippled immune systems which lack CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, so they can receive human xenografts. These are also the classes of immune cells needed to fight viral infections. These mice need to be protected from contact with animals which might infect them because there are no broad spectrum antivirals to use if they become infected. They are not isolated from human beings. That is where to look for the missing predecessor.

Incidentally, the env gene for XMRV was detected prior to the passages which showed the whole virus. This is assumed to mean the preXMRV1 sequence was present, but the whole virus was not. It could equally well come from low titers of XMRV. Other cases in which the same researchers found an envelope gene and considered that as evidence for a whole virus in which they were unable to detect the gag gene are in print. It seems the criteria for proof depend considerably on whose ox is gored.

There's a recent Silverman paper published here...

XMRV Discovery and Prostate Cancer Related Research
David E. Kang, Michael C. Lee1, Jaydip Das Gupta, Eric A. Klein, and Robert H. Silverman.
25 May 2011
Advances in Virology
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/av/aip/432837/
http://downloads.mts.hindawi.com/MTS-Files/AV/papers/XMLV/432837.v2.pdf