Fungi Find Their Way Into Cancer Tumors, But What They're Doing There is a Mystery

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?"

"Are they alive or not? And if they are..."

[sajavete]

I bet germs went there, and got killed. Next thing you know, we're targeting adaptive cancers to take out misc infestations in human bodies.

You know you where thinking it...

[LamboAlpha]

There is a fungus among us.

What if

[buck-yar]

What if the fungus was the cause of the cancer, and not some infiltrator.

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[Big Hairy Gorilla]

Yeah, some Italian doctor said that cancer WAS fungus, some years back.

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[Locke2005]

That was Mario... he eats way too many mushrooms! (Which the Italians call fungo.)

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[kackle]

No, Dr. Mario only gives out pills.

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[dexterace]

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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[Locke2005]

That was my reaction as well. They have found a correlation between cancer and this fungi, that doesn't answer the question of which is cause and which is effect. It could go either way.

Re:What if

[Maxo-Texas]

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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[RockDoctor]

Yeah, that was about where I was going. You could probably culture fungi from pretty much any tissue of the human body, once you get rid of the fungicidal elements of the default human immune system. Whether those fungi are significantly associated with cancer in general (200-odd named distinct diseases) or these specific cancers is a harder question.

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[Maxo-Texas]

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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[RockDoctor]

"reasonable"

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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[muh_freeze_peach]

With all the new studies coming out with Ivermectin due to covid,

Nice source you got there.

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[RightSaidFred99]

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few cancers caused by them, anything that can cause mutations can increase cancer risk. I would be shocked and literally get the vapors and pass out if even 5% of cancers were caused by any fungus, the idea is ridiculous.

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[Immerman]

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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[RockDoctor]

5% of cancer types, or 5% of cancer cases? Very different questions, since the occurrence rates of different cancers vary, a lot.

Cancer: foe or backfiring friend?

[Midnight Thunder]

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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[Immerman]

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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[RonVNX]

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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[Immerman]

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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[RockDoctor]

Fungi survive in rocks in Antarctica - only becoming physiologically active when it's warm enough to met the ice in the near-surface layers of the rock. They are also a component in the formation of "desert varnish" on the surface of rocks in hot deserts (they leave microscopic fossils in the varnish). So for fungi in general, if not specific species of fungi, their temperature range of survival is probably at least as big as that of other phyla. Or kingdoms. Domains. Whichever paradigm you rock with.

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[Midnight Thunder]

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

[bugs2squash]

I'm surprised they could fit into the tumor, there isn't mushroom in there

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[RightSaidFred99]

Of all the horror tropes out there, the one I find creepiest is when people start growing mushrooms or other fungus from their skin. Absolutely fucking creeps me out at a visceral level.

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[Immerman]

Stay away from locker room showers, or beware the athlete's foot that ate LA...

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[RockDoctor]

Prepare to be freaked out : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Sugar?

[kackle]

Don't some bacteria and fungi crave sugars? And isn't that a tumor's preference too? [wikipedia.org] Could it be a prime location for a higher concentration of sugar (for some reason) within the body?

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[RockDoctor]

Which of the several hundreds of different "sugar" compounds in mammalian physiology are you talking about?

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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[kackle]

Sorry, I'm not a "rock doctor" or even a rock lobster, I'm just a layperson gluing together a bunch of things I've read in the past.

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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[RockDoctor]

A ... "need" ("desire" is strongly anthropomorphic for a cellular entity) is a difficult concept. Using one sugar preferentially over another (And so causing a local decrease in that sugar's concentration may have a visible (so, targetable) biochemical effect. But it's also going to run against the rest of the body producing those sugars in their normal levels.

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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[kackle]

Interesting. Thank you for your thoughtful response.

Speculated for a long time

[backslashdot]

Reference: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co... [wiley.com]

cure?

[mcswell]

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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[laughing_badger]

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?

[vakuumkatten]

In the bodies of the patients, did they investigate and control for fungi contents in other non-cancerous cell structures like muscle, cartilage, lungs, etc?