US scientists discover common virus that can cause skin cancer

You’ve probably heard of HPV—the virus most people think of when it comes to things like cervical cancer. But did you know there’s a type of HPV that usually just lives on your skin, minding its own business? It’s called beta-HPV, and until now, scientists thought it didn’t directly cause skin cancer.

They believed it only helped skin damage from sun exposure get worse over time.Well, here’s the twist: Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found proof that this “harmless” beta-HPV can actually turn into a full-on cause of skin cancer—but especially in people whose immune systems aren’t working right.The story starts with a 34-year-old woman who kept getting a common type of skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma on her forehead.

Despite surgeries and treatments, the cancer kept coming back. Doctors first thought her skin couldn’t repair sun damage properly and that her immune system was letting the virus run wild.Turns out, in her case, the beta-HPV virus actually sneaked into the DNA of her skin cells and was actively producing viral proteins basically hijacking her skin cells. This was big news because before, beta-HPV wasn’t known to do that.

Her immune system’s problem was that certain immune cells, T cells, weren’t activating well enough to fight off the virus. Because of this, the virus stuck around and caused the skin cancer to come back again and again.So what did the NIH team do? They created a personalized treatment plan and gave her a stem cell transplant to replace her faulty immune cells with healthy ones. After the transplant, all her HPV-related issues, including the skin cancer, disappeared and haven’t come back in over three years.This case shows that in people with weakened immune defenses, beta-HPV can directly cause skin cancer by hijacking skin cells, rather than just helping sun damage do its thing.Scientists say this discovery could change how skin cancer, especially this kind, gets treated, especially for folks with immune system problems. It also highlights how important our immune system is for keeping viruses in check. “This discovery could completely change how we think about the development, and consequently the treatment, of cSCC in people who have a health condition that compromises immune function,” said Andrea Lisco, M.D.

, Ph.D., of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). “It suggests that there may be more people out there with aggressive forms of cSCC who have an underlying immune defect and could benefit from treatments targeting the immune system.”