Juliet Spencer, associate professor of biology, has been awarded
a $412,000 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for cancer
research. Spencer’s latest research expands on earlier work that
examined a variant of the herpes virus (HCMV), determining how
it is able to lay dormant and go undetected in humans, sometimes
for decades, before attacking the immune system. Using the
three-year NIH grant, Spencer will study the effect of the HCMV
virus, which infects up to 80 percent of Americans, on cancer
cells. Specifically, she’ll examine whether a substance that
HCMV cells secrete weakens healthy cells’ defenses—thereby
opening the door for pre-cancerous cells to grow. “We don’t
think the virus needs to infect the cells to cause cancer,”
Spencer explained. “We think that infected cells may produce a
substance that causes healthy cells to be more likely to become
cancerous.” If Spencer is able to demonstrate the connection
between HCMV and breast cancer tumors, the discovery could lead
to changes in the treatme