We see viruses as the villains of the movie, especially now during this pandemic. But what if I told you that they can also play the superhero role? Back in the 19th century it was seen that when people diagnosed with cancer were infected with a virus, they could go into remission. There have been hundreds of cases like this, with the most novel case being a 62 year old man diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma (a blood cancer) who went into full remission after being infected with Sars-CoV-2. How this occurs has been very difficult to pinpoint. However, many studies (including some from our lab) have seen that our immune cells can confuse cells with a viral infection and cancer cells and decide to kill them both. This mechanism is called molecular mimicry- in this talk I will explain what it is and how we have used it in our fight to defeat cancer.
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