Simian virus 40 (SV40) can cause cancer in certain other animals and is closely related to a number of similar human viruses.
The $139,000 grant is going to University of North Dakota (UND) Associate Vice President for Research and Economic Development, Barry Milavetz, to continue his research on SV40.
Milavetz is interested in how SV40 duplicates itself in an infected cell and in particular, how the the cell’s epigenetics modifies SV40 to become a virus particle.
The purpose of the National Institutes of Health grant (NIH) grant is to identify the mechanisms that cause the modifications in epigenetic structure during the formation of a virus particle.
“We are particularly interested in the epigenetic changes occurring during the very first stage of an infection, since this is the time that the infection is most easily treatable,” Milavetz said.
Milavetz is also a professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He and Meera Ajeet Kumar, working as a technician, expect to identify all of the epigenetic changes occurring during the formation of an SV40 virus particle.
They will then determine the factors responsible for the changes and how those factors function.
“A number of drugs are in various stages of development that target factors involved in epigenetic regulation,” Milavetz said. “Our results may be useful for identifying drug targets that can be exploited for treating infections by this group of viruses.”
He added that the research on epigenetic regulation of SV40 infections will advance knowledge of how viruses infect cells and cause cancer.
“It will also yield insight with respect to epigenetic regulation of our own genes,” Milavetz said.