Acabo de leer en Wired News (vía Slashdot) que un grupo de investigadores de la Universidad de California modificaron el virus del SIDA para combatir el cáncer:

Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles have tweaked HIV to create a gene therapy that attacks cancer tumors in mice.
The research is a step forward for the beleaguered field of gene therapy, which has enjoyed isolated successes and suffered repeated setbacks over the past 20 years. But tinkering and fine tuning will be the key to a successful gene therapy, UCLA researchers believe. They published their study in the Feb. 13 issue of Nature Medicine.

Más concretamente, programan el virus del SIDA para que ataque ciertas proteínas de las células infectadas que provocan resistencia a la medicación:

The secret to the UCLA researchers’ success was adding the sindbis cloak, Chen said. He and his colleagues suspected the virus might make an HIV gene therapy more stable, and the results of the study showed they were right.
The scientists also inserted a glowing firefly protein into the virus to track its progress. They used a light-detection "cooled charged-coupled device," or CCCD, camera to look at the glowing protein inside live mice. Because the protein was attached to the gene therapy, the researchers could see that the treatment had hit its mark.
The researchers programmed the altered virus package to attack a protein on the cancer cell surface called p-glycoprotein, which causes problems in cancer patients by shuttling cancer drugs away from the cell. In other words, p-glycoprotein causes resistance to cancer medication. Scientists could customize the system to target any protein on the surface of a cell, Chen said. He and his colleagues have seen success with about a dozen different molecules, including brain and other blood cells, he said.

Impresionante…