Radioactive Bacteria Attack Cancer

ananyo writes "Two dangerous things together might make a medicine for one of the hardest cancers to treat. In a mouse model of pancreatic cancer, researchers have shown that bacteria can deliver deadly radiation to tumours — exploiting the immune suppression that normally makes the disease so intractable. The researchers coated the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes with radioactive antibodies and injected the bacterium into mice with pancreatic cancer that had spread to multiple sites. After several doses, the mice that had received the radioactive bacteria had 90% fewer metastases compared with mice that had received saline or radiation alone."

Comments

Re:So how do I pass these radioactive bacteria?

[ShanghaiBill]

Magically transport them to a parallel universe or pass them through me kidneys?

Many medical isotopes have a half-life of just a few days. So by the time the bacteria are done doing their job, the radioactive isotopes have decayed to a harmless level. Since the half-lives are so short, these isotopes cannot be stockpiled, and need to be generated in a reactor no more than a day or so before they are used. There are only a few reactors in the world configured to make these isotopes. The Chalk River Reactor in Ontario makes most medical isotopes for North America, and there was a major shortage of these isotopes in 2007 when it had to shut for maintenance.

Re:Mutation danger?

[Ambassador Kosh]

You could actually do the math for the mutation rate and the odds of a mutation being useful and weigh that against the odds of survival by the patient without the treatment. The math is probably not too bad and it is something that the scientists involved probably considered. Sure there is a non-zero chance of it happening but without this the odds of surviving pancreatic cancer is close to zero. I had a friend die from that one and it is definitely not the way you want to go. It is a very soft organ and VERY hard to treat with surgery, chemo or other drugs. It is one of the hardest to treat cancers we know of. So this kind of treatment is better than what we have even if it could mutate into something and kill you.