Fungi Find Their Way Into Cancer Tumors, But What They're Doing There is a Mystery (statnews.com) 42
Angus Chen, reporting for StatNews: For a while, scientists thought the trillions of microbes on our bodies lived in landscapes connected to the outside world -- our skin, hair, and gut -- but research in the last few years has shown that's not so. When Ravid Straussman, a cancer biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, looked deeper, he and several other research groups around the world found bacteria in the milieu of tumors. Then, he and other scientists began wondering: if tumors are home to bacteria, then what about another major resident of our microbiome, fungi? Now, two new papers published in Cell, one from Straussman's lab and collaborators at the University of California San Diego and another from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Duke University, have found genetic footprints of fungi in tumors across the human body.
Together, the studies provide a "nice, rigorous association" between fungi and cancer, said Ami Bhatt, an associate professor of medicine and genetics at Stanford University who did not work on either paper. "It provides pretty compelling evidence there may be rare fungi within tumors," she said. But the work raises far more questions than it answers. "Are they alive or not? And assuming they really are there, then why are they there? And how did they get there?"
Together, the studies provide a "nice, rigorous association" between fungi and cancer, said Ami Bhatt, an associate professor of medicine and genetics at Stanford University who did not work on either paper. "It provides pretty compelling evidence there may be rare fungi within tumors," she said. But the work raises far more questions than it answers. "Are they alive or not? And assuming they really are there, then why are they there? And how did they get there?"
"Are they alive or not? And if they are..." (Score:2)
You know you where thinking it... (Score:2)
What if (Score:4, Interesting)
What if the fungus was the cause of the cancer, and not some infiltrator.
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If you are thinking about Tullio Simoncini (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metodo_Simoncini), he is a scammer and a convicted killer. He killed at least one patient, and has been convicted in Italy and Albania for malpractice and fraud. And he was saying something completely different form what this study is saying.
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Re:What if (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, it could be the fungi causes cancer or it could be fungi already in the body in smaller numbers is protected by the cancer from the immune system and grows inside the cancer.
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I try to find a couple dozen agreeable, supportive statements to make each day. I enjoyed replying to your post. It was intelligent, interesting, and reasonable.
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On Slashdot?
Really I don't get this "social media" stuff. I thought I could garner a million likes, then take the certificate for that - and 30 folding beer vouchers - down to the docks and get a blow job. Does "social media" not work like that?
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With all the new studies coming out with Ivermectin due to covid,
Nice source you got there.
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Is it? We really don't understand what causes cancer, beyond some of the strongest risk factors. We do know an HPV infection seems to be, at a minimum, a necessary precondtion for cervical cancer at least some other tumors (e.g. warts). That's a virus rather than a fungus, but fungi have been capturing and cultivating various single-cell organisms (e.g. lichens) at least as long as animals have existed, and what is cancer but a family of cells that have renounced multi-cellularism in favor of individual
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Cancer: foe or backfiring friend? (Score:2)
The follow up to this would be whether the cancer is a real foe or whether cancer is a failed protection mechanism? Also, since fungi are generally not an issue in bodies above a certain temperature, are there temperature factors involved?
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An interesting idea...
I've never heard of such a temperature limit though - there's a *huge* number of fungi both benign and malignant that thrive in and on the human body. Heck, the tropics are considerably warmer than body temperature and fungi of all kinds absolutely thrive there.
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I heard about the temperature limit in a piece about climate change. There's a lot of fungi out there that could hurt us except we're too warm for them. Some of those fungi are expected to adapt to warmer temperatures, and cause problems for humans.
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Ah - a good warning that environmental fungi may evolve to become infectious, but not really relevant to existing fungi that are already infectious. (Athletes foot, yeast infections, etc,etc,etc.)
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An interesting idea...
I've never heard of such a temperature limit though - there's a *huge* number of fungi both benign and malignant that thrive in and on the human body. Heck, the tropics are considerably warmer than body temperature and fungi of all kinds absolutely thrive there.
I had originally read about this in an article where people were dying from an unknown infection, before a global investigation revealed the fungi link. I am having a hard time finding the article I originally read, though this article does cover aspects of it:
https://holisticprimarycare.ne... [holisticprimarycare.net]
tight (Score:5, Funny)
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Stay away from locker room showers, or beware the athlete's foot that ate LA...
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Sugar? (Score:3)
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Or which several dozen of the set of "sugars" make up the target of your hypothesis?
Even the restrictions of human physiology makes real differences to how glucose, fructose, lactose, maltose, dextrose and ribose are treated - (which is why they've got simple names, not complex names - they were the first ones identified as being significantly different).
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Here's another layperson's thought: If these are congregating within tumors, could they be programmed to destroy them upon arrival? (A thoughtful answer is not expected; I'm just spitballing...)
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It's potentially targatable ; whether that potential is actually usable without killing the patient ... much harder to say.
My relevant background,
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Speculated for a long time (Score:5, Informative)
Reference: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co... [wiley.com]
cure? (Score:5, Interesting)
The other question is, if these fungi are rare elsewhere but common in tumors, could they be genetically modified so as to deliver anti-cancer drugs directly to the tumor?
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That presumes that they will migrate to the tumour site, but possibly. A drug that binds to the fungi already there and releases an anti-tumor agent is another option.
Fungi in non-cancerous cell structures? (Score:1)