Genetically Modified Salmonella Destroys Cancer By Provoking An Immune Response, Study Finds (sandiegouniontribune.com) 79
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.
Hell yeah (Score:2, Funny)
Time to start smoking again!
Will we see the end of cancer? (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Re:Will we see the end of cancer? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope they figure out some kind of kill switch for modified organisms before doomsday happens.
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So, you understand that genes don't just randomly jump, right? Just because something has been modified doesn't mean that it's gene will jump to another species and do something completely different than what it was designed to do.
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Well, that was a very rigorous scientific rebuttal.
NOT
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Quite a bit of our genome came from bacteria, viruses, and fungi-- genes that "jumped" to us.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news... [sciencemag.org]
That said, I hope this new treatment comes to something in human trials. I went through two years of intensive chemo, and from that feel we are in the dark ages still wrt cancer treatment. We give people poison that destroys their bodies to cure them (more often buy a little time). It seems like a treatment contemporary to bloodletting and leeches.
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you need a big gun to shoot a small moving target you can't see. as they say, cancer is hard because it's a catch-all term for "some of your cells fucked up and are multiplying uncontrollably" and the hard part of that is that A. they're still 'your' cells, and B. it's for all values of 'cells', 'fucked up' and 'multiplying uncontrollably'
Re: Will we see the end of cancer? (Score:1)
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So, you understand that genes don't just randomly jump, right?
Wait, what?
Just because something has been modified doesn't mean that it's gene will jump to another species and do something completely different than what it was designed to do.
It also doesn't mean that it won't have deep and long-lasting effects at all.
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So, you understand that genes don't just randomly jump, right?
They literally do.
Evolution isn't just parent->child inheritance. Genes can go "horizontally" as well. AKA from peer-to-peer regardless of relation.
These things usually happen, FUNNILY ENOUGH, because of infections.
The host body copies the genome to itself, or at least functional parts of it, so it can recreate antibodies to it if it is ever encountered again.
These segments of DNA CAN and HAVE been reactivated plenty of times. (there's many historic virii segments that directly cause cancer, as a good
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Well, let's consider where these things were in our diets before industry. Aldehydes are the basis of many plant fragrances which plants use to manipulate animals (and us) because scents can attract, repel, give pleasure, and have more subtle manipulative effects. Fructose is the only typ
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The host body copies the genome to itself, or at least functional parts of it, so it can recreate antibodies to it if it is ever encountered again.
This is categorically false, for the following reasons. 1) The host never intentionally incorporates viral or bacterial DNA into its own genome. Some viruses evolved the ability to make their genetic material integrate, but the host really doesn't want that to happen. 2) That's not how antibodies work. Antibodies and their selection is done by processing of foreign proteins and presenting them to B cells, some of which are very long-lived and which will multiply if their target is seen again. You don't need
Re:Will we see the end of cancer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hollywood changed it (Score:2)
In the novel it was from biological warfare but Hollywood changed it to a virus that was supposed to cure cancer in the 4th movie version. The screenplay writers did it because they heard about serious attempts to have a virus that cures cancer and chose it as the target for their rant against the modern world. Maybe they think we should just sit still and wait for the rapture instead of trying
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Never. Cures don't have a profit stream like treatments do.
cancer stops instantaneous death (Score:1)
Another great announcement (Score:1)
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Yeah the replicability [wikipedia.org] rate is so low the media might do us a favor by only reporting on successful replications.
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There have been plenty of people saved by these new types of treatments. One test at duke involved using Polio to kill cancer. It's actually been tested and found to work in many patients although not without problems. Researchers are onto it but it's only being used on test cases where ppl are terminal. Some ppl still die but otherwise all die.
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hmm....yes, eventually. No one's getting out of here alive.
Isn't this the part where Will Smith comes in? (Score:3)
I thought I've heard this story before...
GMO?!?!? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Say NO to GMO (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
You appear to have a few misconceptions about how selection works. Killing adults after they've raised their young isn't selection.
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Though the majority of cancers overall occur in old age, a lot of them also strike during reproductive years. Just look at all the cancers that home in on female plumbing.
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You ought to tweet that.
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Baking soda cures cancer? that's news to me.
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Well, cross you off the 'scientist' list.
Re:And it's patentable! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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that recipe is a good way to clean a drain, if that. Trying to pull that one out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] ?
Been waiting for this avenue to be explored (Score:5, Informative)
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
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Funny how bad things can be turned to good.
demonstrated that Salmonella typhimurium engineered to make a foreign protein.... The protein, called FlaB,
So it's not just bugs, but FlaB also turns out to be good for you.
What attracts the bacteria to the tumors? (Score:2)
TFA did not say, which is curious, because I would have thought that would be an important discovery. The body's occasional failure to distinguish cancer from non-cancer is pretty much the sole reason why cancer is even a problem.
The article did say that this variety of salmonella prefers a low oxygen environment but doesn't explain if that environment was unique to tumours or if it was sufficient to attract the bacteria.
Immune response is not the mechanism. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Slashdot, curing cancer since 1997! (Score:2)
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Salmon (Score:2)
Am I the only one that read that as genetically modified salmon destroys cancer? That would have been so much more awesome.
Still no cure for cancer yet... (Score:2)
Still no cure for cancer yet...
Oh, wait a minute. This isn't fark.com.
I, for one, welcome our new genetically engineered microscopic overlords...
There, I fixed it.
I know all those Minella brothers (Score:2)
and Sal---maybe he ain't so bad after all ;)
My fridge can cure cancer (Score:1)