New therapy

"The virus, called adeno-associated virus type 2, or AAV-2, infects an estimated 80 percent of the population.

"Our results suggest that adeno-associated virus type 2, which infects the majority of the population but has no known ill effects, kills multiple types of cancer cells yet has no effect on healthy cells," said Craig Meyers, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Penn State College of Medicine in Pennsylvania."

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"For their study, Meyers and colleagues first infected a batch of human cells with HPV, some strains of which cause cervical cancer.

They then infected these cells and normal cells with AAV-2.

After six days, all the HPV-infected cells died.

The same thing happened with cervical, breast, prostate and squamous cell tumor cells."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8305953/