US scientists hope to be able to use a harmless form of the Aids virus to seek and destroy cancer cells, BBC News website said.
A University of California team found an "impotent" version of HIV, with the disease-causing parts of it removed, tracked down cancer cells in mice.
The next step would be to insert a gene into the virus that would kill the cancer upon contact.
The team told Nature Medicine more safety studies were needed before such a method could be tested in humans.
The mice they studied had a form of skin cancer, called melanoma, that had spread to the lungs.
In the laboratory, the scientists took HIV and removed the parts of the virus that causes disease.
They then stripped off the virus' outer coat and redressed it with the outer suit of another virus.
By doing this, the researchers had changed the target of the virus.
HIV normally infects immune cells called T cells. The new outer coat instead directed HIV to hunt down molecules present on cancer cells, called P-glycoproteins.
The scientists also added a substance to the virus that would make it visibly glow when looked at with a special camera so they could track where it traveled once injected into the mice.
As well as controlling cancer, they hope this technique might be useful for treating genetic diseases.

Saturn has a case of the blues. Captured by the Cassini spacecraft, the new true-color images of the gas giant's northern latitudes are a vivid blue, astronomy.com said.
The first image was taken by Cassini's wide-angle camera in December 2004 at a distance of 446,900 miles (719,200 kilometers) from the ringed planet. Showcasing Saturn's northern polar region, shadows cast by rings litter the blue region, appearing like atmospheric bands. Shadows created by outer rings are at higher latitudes than those created by rings closer to Saturn, which fall closer to the equator. Clouds also are sprinkled against the azure backdrop.
While clouds are seen in this image, the relatively cloud-free makeup of Saturn's northern hemisphere may create the blue color. Gases in Saturn's upper atmosphere scatter blue light rays, which gives the northern latitudes their azure appearance. Cassini mission scientists may examine why these latitudes are cloud-free.
The second view caught Saturn's icy moon Mimas crossing in front of the planet. Heavily crated, Mimas looks like a dented golf ball orbiting the planet. The satellite's largest crater, Herschel, can't be seen in this view. As with the other image, Saturn's rings cast shadows on the backdrop. Cassini's narrow-angle camera images were obtained in January 2005 from a distance of approximately 870,000 miles (1.4 million km) from the ringed planet.

Here's a new diet drink to help people shed pounds: oolong tea enriched with some of the antioxidant compounds that naturally occur in green tea, Science News reported.
Men who drank this hybrid brew during a 3-month study in Japan lost 1.1 more kilograms in weight than did men drinking conventional oolong tea--with no other difference in their respective diets or exercise.
The hybrid tea also offered a second benefit: reduced development of oxidized fatty materials in the bloodstream, such as low-density-lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the bad cholesterol. Oxidized fats, especially LDL cholesterol, have been linked to the formation of artery-clogging plaque and heart attacks.
Indeed, Tomonori Nagao and his collaborators conclude, these results suggest a possible role for the chemical process of oxidation in the accumulation of body fat.

Shared moral values are less important than compatible personalities as a recipe for a good marriage, according to Reuters.
Married couples often share the same attitudes about faith and other values, researchers from the University of Iowa found. But those with personalities similar to their spouses were the happiest.
"People may be attracted to those who have similar attitudes, values and beliefs and even marry them," the researchers said, and those qualities are easy to spot in a potential mate. Attitudes toward subjects such as religion or politics "are highly visible," they said.
But how married people behave was shown to have a greater effect on happiness.
"Being in a committed relationship entails regular interaction and requires extensive coordination in dealing with tasks, issues and problems of daily living," the study found.
Differences in how to deal with everyday matters can lead to "more friction and conflict," it said.
Personality-driven traits--like being open, easy-going or organized--are likely to play a bigger role in the marriage, the researchers found after studying 291 newly married couples.
The newlyweds were married for an average of five months when the data was culled late in 2000 and had dated for an average of 3 1/2 years.
The couples were participants in the Iowa Marital Assessment Project, a long-term study being conducted by the university with funding from the National Institute of Mental Health under the National Institutes of Health.
Participants were asked to evaluate their own traits and were videotaped interacting with each other.
Partners who rated their marriages as highly satisfactory were found to have more common personalities.

Putting tiny crustaceans in Vietnamese water tanks and wells to eat the mosquitoes that carry dengue fever is helping to control the disease, a New Scientist report said.
"It's blown us away. We've had almost total success in 37 communes, and it's been done by the local people," says Brian Kay of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia. The mosquito-control program Kay set up with entomologist Vu Sinh Nam of the Ministry of Health in Hanoi, Vietnam, may have protected over 380,000 people from the disease.
The dengue virus causes high fever and muscle cramps so painful that the disease is sometimes called break-bone fever. And the severe form of the disease--dengue haemorrhagic fever--can be lethal.
Since 1970, dengue haemorrhagic fever has spread from nine countries to 60, with cases occurring in Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific. The cause of the upsurge is not fully understood, but the mixing of the four different viral strains by international travelers is thought to play a key role.
The rise of densely populated "shanty towns" around cities also contributes. These towns lack services, and discarded containers, or containers used to store water, become breeding grounds for the virus-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito.
A key aspect of the low-tech strategy used in Vietnam was enlisting local people to catch crustaceans--called Mesocyclops--from water tanks and wells, and transfer them to uninfested water. The "mesos" feed on mosquito larvae that develop into adults in still water. Local people were also encouraged to get rid of small water containers.
"We've never visited a village that didn't have some Mesocyclops. They are only one millimeter long, but they swim with a characteristic jerky movement. The kids can pick them out very quickly," says Kay.
Kay and Nam developed their program in nine communes, or small clusters of villages, in Northern Vietnam. In 2001, local health and community leaders introduced the program into 37 additional communes in the north, totally eliminating the mosquito in 32 of them.
There have been no reported cases of the disease in any of the communes since 2001. The impact should be even greater when the program is rolled out in the central districts of Vietnam, which have a far worse problem with dengue, with rates as high as 113 cases per 100,000.