XMRV and Prostate Cancer: major devolpment

[RRM]

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0044954

This is a follow up study by the very discoverers of XMRV (Urisman, Silverman, DeRisi, Fischer and others). They basically re-evaluated their original cohort/samples as well as new ones, and determined that their original findings were wrong.

Moreover, they checked their original samples for contamination and found "direct evidence" for contamination (using mitochondrial SNP analysis).

The authors conclude that:

In summary, our findings do not support any association between XMRV infection and prostate cancer, and by extension indicate that XMRV has never replicated outside of the laboratory setting. The initial discovery linking XMRV to prostate cancer in 2006 arose from laboratory contamination of clinical samples by an XMRV-infected LNCaP cell line. In turn, the LNCaP cells were most likely previously infected by 22Rv1, from which XMRV almost certainly originated through in vivo passaging of the CWR22 xenograft in mice.

EDIT: sorry for the bad typo in the thread title.

 

[barbc56]

Very interesting and a long standing question. Do you think any of the positive papers for prostate cancer will be retracted?
Barb C.:>)

 

[RRM]

The first (and arguably most important) one (http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.0020025) has been retracted today - see the other thread for more .

I don't think that most papers will be retracted.

 

[Firestormm]

New study confirms erroneous link between XMRV virus, prostate cancer

As described this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, the original association between XMRV and prostate cancer resulted from traces of XMRV that appear to have found their way into the prostate samples from other cells being handled in the same laboratory in 2003. These cells were also contaminated with the retrovirus. "Everything arose from this presumed contamination event," said Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF and director of the UCSF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center.

Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-erroneous-link-xmrv-virus-prostate.html#jCp

A further interpretation of this important development from Research 1st: http://www.research1st.com/2012/09/...&utm_campaign=Feed:+Research1st+(Research1st)

The team was able to identify cells called LNCaP cells that were used in the same laboratory as samples from the prostate tumors under study in the early 2000s. These LNCaP cells were contaminated with XMRV, a virus shown by Paprotka et al to have been created by accident in a laboratory experiment by scientists working with mice and prostate cancer tumors to make an experimental cell line called 22Rv1.[3]