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Genetically Modified Salmonella Destroys Cancer By Provoking An Immune Response, Study Finds (sandiegouniontribune.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from San Diego Union-Tribune: A genetically modified bacterium destroys tumors by provoking an immune response, according to a study published Wednesday. Using mice and cultures of human cancer cells, a South Korean-led scientific team demonstrated that Salmonella typhimurium engineered to make a foreign protein caused immune cells called macrophages and neutralizes to mobilize against the cancer. The bacterium came from an attenuated strain that has little infectious potential. Such strains have been tested as vaccines. The protein, called FlaB, is made by a gene in the estuarine bacterium Vibrio vulnificus, a close relative of the cholera bacterium, Vibrio cholerae. Tumors shrank below detectable levels in 11 out of 20 mice injected with the modified Salmonella, said the study, published in Science Translational Medicine. The engineered Salmonella provoke a sustained immune response, in addition to preventing the spread of a human colon cancer implanted in a mouse. The bacterium also were found to be nontoxic, multiplying almost exclusively inside tumors.
Having lost dear family members and friends to cancer variants, I follow such news items with interest.
Yes, this above study was with mice, not yet a trial on humans. But even so I have the impression that significant breakthroughs are now being made regularly, and then there is Microsoft throwing machine learning at the problem, all of which leads me to wonder - will we soonish be able to cure all cancer? That would be truly a breakthrough for for society.
Any insights from people in the field?
I only get infected by fair trade ORGANIC salmonella!
It was bad enough in plants. Anyone who eats GMO salmonella gets what they deserve.
This will also kill Luddites, by selecting them out of the population. Our cancers get treated while theirs don't.
BCG (Bacillus Calmette–Guérin, still a common base for TB vaccines today in many countries) has been a standard treatment for bladder cancer (specifically: non-muscle invasive bladder cancer) since the late 70s. As it was explained to me in medical school in the early 90s, before molecular biology was widely understood by physicians (at least not to my standards -- I was a molecular biologist before med school), it was a general stimulant of local immune response, but I always suspected it was something more specific.
The idea of a specific immunological cross-reactions has been well known in medicine for maybe 80 years. "Rheumatic fever" caused by Group A ß-hemolytic streptococci often triggers heart/valve damage because antibodies produced in response to a bacterial protein often cross-react with a structural heart protein. In this example (once called "rheumatic" heart disease or valve damage), the effects are negative. I always thought deliberately targeted cross-reactions were an obvious path for treatment investigation, and was frustrated that it never seemed to be very actively pursued.
In truth, it probably has been, many times. Some positive studies were likely published; others were equivocal or lack sufficient (statistical) power. Some failed.
As a space enthusiast, I always say "space is hard". Biology is harder. Even I forget that, mostly because a molecular biologist's first reaction is to try to think of easy ways to explore/prove their latest idea (trying hard to ignore the fact that their "quick elegant" experiment will likely take years to bear compelling evidence, due to complications) -- and a physician? Well, even we forget the truth/depth of the aphorism "it's an art as much as a science".
I'm hoping we'll be seeing a LOT more results along this line of inquiry in the coming decade, because I'm hoping we're finally ready to really explore it. We may not be, yet. Molecular simulations may not yet be at sufficient reliability, and the combinatorial math may yield too many permutations for empirical trials
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
you... you want people to start doing their own research? like set up a multi-billion dollar lab in their basement, study biochemistry for 20 years, etc? Or do you mean
the research you're missing is on your sources. all you can do on hard things you don't know is to research how good your sources are, and pick the opinion of the best one and trust their expertise. your research is very poor.
by the way, the flu vaccine is over 50% effective. souce: cdc, where hundreds of smart scientists with decades of experience each concur. you source: your yoga instructor who has a blog and wrote in it after watching a youtube video.
here's an idea: when all the real scientists agree on something and 1% disagrees, that 1% may be wrong. but unless you're a scientist in that field yourself, you are too dumb to make that determination. you're just some loser that now thinks he knows string theory is bs because he read a 40 page book with pretty pictures and short words, but no numbers.
actually, scratch that. stay the way you are. the dumber and more ridiculous others are in the world, the easier for me. big fish small pond and all. relative higher salary. hotter girls, more clowns to laugh at round.
If you click two layers deep you can read the scientific article. The "immune response" to the bacteria isn't mentioned in the abstract of the paper, because it is not relevant to the tumors shrinking. It might even be bad news for the anti-cancer mechanism.
The "foreign protein" that was genetically added to the bacterium is FlaB, and FlaB (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1574-695X.2009.00643.x/full paragraph 2 after the abstract) triggers the TLR5-mediated cell death pathway.
They tested this bacterium in TLR5 (Toll-like receptor 5) negative tumors and found that the FlaB induced shrinkage of the tumors. The immune response to the bacterium was not the mechanism for the tumor shrinkage, the bacteria-produced FlaB proteing was.
If slashdot wants to be "News for Nerds" they should do better than re-using the words from a gloss of a scientific article. If you click the link provided, you find a mainstream news article that emphasizes the immune response, implies the immune response is the mechanism, calls FlaB a "foreign protein" (which is true, but one of the least relevant details about it) and doesn't mention that this was only tried in TLR5-negative tumors.