Retroviral Pathogenesis

Excerpt

Retroviruses are associated with a wide variety of diseases including an array of malignancies, immunodeficiencies, and neurologic disorders. Syndromes as seemingly diverse as arthritis, osteopetrosis, and anemia can all result from retroviral infection. These disorders afflict a large number of different creatures, ranging from clams and fish to birds and mammals, including humans. Some of these disorders have significant agricultural impact, crippling farm animals during their most productive years, whereas others have a devastating medical and economic impact on humans. Still others, particularly many of the retrovirus-induced malignancies of rodents, were found originally in laboratory settings and provide excellent model systems for probing the biological and molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis.

Study of these disorders has provided critical information about the ways in which retroviruses induce disease. In addition, the mechanisms involved in these diseases have shed important light on the way in which similar conditions, lacking a retroviral etiology, arise. As noted in Chapter 1 studies of tumor induction by retroviruses provide the basis of much of modern molecular tumor biology. The discovery of viral oncogenes and the ways in which such genes can induce tumors provided both the intellectual framework and the molecular tools that have led to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms important for the development of all cancers. These investigations also helped lay the foundation for our current understanding of signal transduction and normal cellular growth control.