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Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice

jaist.ac.jp

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Re: Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice

#91

Post by allie1 »

teekert wrote: post #70
kinj28 wrote: post #40

I have been working with my dad on his cancer treatment since last year. My interest in the topic has only peaked ever since. (Disclaimer- I am an engineer and not a microbiologist/doctor) Mutations and wrong copying of genome happens all the time in the body and some enzyme has the job of correcting the mutated genes so it doesn’t get into the system. Level 2 defence is T cells killing it as identified as foreign bo…

It starts with mutations (sometimes accelerated by mutagens (smoke, alcohol, etc) or inflammation (viruses, infections, etc) or just chance (things like asbestos up the division rate by constant physical damage and thus up the probability or an error in copying). But there is much more to it. This is a nice paper for an overview: Hallmarks of Cancer (tng) [0]. It (among others) adds the very important and for years u…

Would sports also increase the rate of division? Bodybuilding for example you intentionally make micro tears in muscles to get them to repair and grow (lay person, apologies for the mistakes)

Re: Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice

#92

Post by somedude89897 »

torben-friis wrote: post #9

100% response, zero side effects? This sounds like world changing news. Can anyone with domain expertise explain the catch, if any?

Very small sample size and only in mice. Most experimental treatments don't make it to the clinic, and this could be another in a long list of exciting early results that don't lead to anything. However... These results seem too good to be true, but the paper actually seems pretty good. There have been other attempts to use anaerobic bacteria to treat cancer (as solid tumors tend to be hypoxic environments), this is the first I've seen that interacts with PD-1/PD-L1 pathway. This is the most promising cancer treatment I've seen in quite a while. Maybe we can be cautiously optimistic!

Re: Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice

#93

Post by d--b »

estearum wrote: post #12
torben-friis wrote: post #9

100% response, zero side effects? This sounds like world changing news. Can anyone with domain expertise explain the catch, if any?

The catch is that there are thousands of promising therapies in animal models/pre-human testing. A very very tiny fraction of them will ever make it to market for a variety of both good and not-good reasons.

From what I saw, there are very few experimental therapies that claim 100% efficacy, no side effect, no patent on complex engineering process to produce the drug.

I agree with GP that it is very notable.

I mean if it works on humans, which is not a stretch, colorectal cancer is done. It's huge.

Re: Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice

#94

Post by xlbuttplug2 »

choeger wrote: post #90

So maybe I am too much a layperson here, but even without any direct therapetutic effects, it is pretty remarkable to have an easily scalable mechanism to get self-replicating agents into tumors, but nowhere else, is it not?

Even lay-er person, but maybe the specificity is not that impressive in mice? Perhaps when you scale to more complex animals it is inevitable to see false positives (detrimental effects to healthy cells)?

Re: Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice

#95

Post by throw9393848449 »

torben-friis wrote: post #9

100% response, zero side effects? This sounds like world changing news. Can anyone with domain expertise explain the catch, if any?

A few years ago we also had 100% effective medication with zero side effects. Now birth rates are down, mortality up, and young people misteriosly die from cancer and hearth attacks.

Re: Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice

#96

Post by somedude89897 »

choeger wrote: post #90

So maybe I am too much a layperson here, but even without any direct therapetutic effects, it is pretty remarkable to have an easily scalable mechanism to get self-replicating agents into tumors, but nowhere else, is it not?

Yes it is amazing! Solid tumors tend to be poorly oxygenated, as they don't have a good network of blood vessels to supply them. The bacteria in these experiments can only live in low oxygen environments, so they will multiply in the tumor and die in any other part of the body they end up in. It's a clever idea, hopefully it will be successful.

Re: Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice

#97

Post by inglor_cz »

kinj28 wrote: post #40

I have been working with my dad on his cancer treatment since last year. My interest in the topic has only peaked ever since. (Disclaimer- I am an engineer and not a microbiologist/doctor) Mutations and wrong copying of genome happens all the time in the body and some enzyme has the job of correcting the mutated genes so it doesn’t get into the system. Level 2 defence is T cells killing it as identified as foreign bo…

L2 is being prioritized because our L1 defences are already very good. We are a long-lived species, and our natural ability to fix errors is so good that it is hard to improve upon. Maybe the long-lived tortoises or whales can do it better, maybe. But we have "several nines of reliability" there.

OTOH our L2 isn't that good, mammals in general (with some notable exceptions such as bats, whales and naked mole rats) are prone to cancer in their older age. There probably is a lot of relatively low-hanging fruit there.

If you think about it - individual cells aren't very precious and if some of them gets FUBARed by something (a virus, radiation or chemical insult), it is better to whack it and reuse the proteins to build a new one, if possible, instead of wasting time and resources on reconstruction of a total wreck.

Which also means that some research into replenishment of stem cells is necessary - and this is, IMHO, the really underfunded part of the whole thing. We lose a lot of stem cells as we age. Maybe we don't have to.

Re: Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice

#98

Post by perlgeek »

johnwheeler wrote: post #54

I have never once seen a promising cancer treatment I've heard of on the news help people. You hear about the breakthrough treatments all the time, but when people get cancer, all you ever hear about is people getting chemotherapy and radiation. Same old scary shit. Well, I guess Leukemia has been somewhat cured I heard, so that's pretty huge. When I was a kid it was a death sentence IIRC.

There are a few factors at play here, I think

* Many breakthroughs from the first research stages never make it into medical application.

* Many breakthroughs are touted as some kind of "novel treatment", but when they get into the hands of the doctor, they talk about it as chemotherapy, because it kills cancer cells. So you might not even notice that you're getting something novel.

* Many breakthroughs take decades until they actually land in mainstream treatment.

* Many breakthroughs are specific to some kinds of cancer.

That said, in most developed countries, survival rates/times for cancer have been steadily improving for decades.

It's a bit like with solar cell and battery tech breakthroughs: you hear about them all the time, but it takes 20 to 30 years until they make it to production. But both have been improving steadily for an impressively long time.

Re: Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice

#99

Post by mr_toad »

kinj28 wrote: post #40

I have been working with my dad on his cancer treatment since last year. My interest in the topic has only peaked ever since. (Disclaimer- I am an engineer and not a microbiologist/doctor) Mutations and wrong copying of genome happens all the time in the body and some enzyme has the job of correcting the mutated genes so it doesn’t get into the system. Level 2 defence is T cells killing it as identified as foreign bo…

> fixing the enzyme that fixes the wrong copy paste mechanism. Or making the enzyme get more efficient and powerful

If we had the tools to easily do that we’d practically be gods.

Re: Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice

#100

Post by mr_toad »

johnwheeler wrote: post #54

I have never once seen a promising cancer treatment I've heard of on the news help people. You hear about the breakthrough treatments all the time, but when people get cancer, all you ever hear about is people getting chemotherapy and radiation. Same old scary shit. Well, I guess Leukemia has been somewhat cured I heard, so that's pretty huge. When I was a kid it was a death sentence IIRC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoclonal_antibody_therapy

These are not your parents cancer treatments.

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