mesentery cancer

hey evolutionary cousins of bacteria, tracehere for a dnews short. if you’ve ever been infected with salmonella,you’ll know how horrible the symptoms are, including diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps. but despite its debilitating and sometimesdeadly effects, researchers from duke university just developed a strain of the bacteria thatmay be great at fighting cancer. in particular, a brain cancer called glioblastoma,which has been a thorn in the side of cancer researchers for decades. it is incredibly aggressive, and causes fast-growingtumors in the brain. the average survival time is just over a year,and less than 10 percent of patients survive

for more than five years. and what’s worse is that brain cancer isn’tlike other cancers, say lung or breast, because those can be targeted more easily with conventionalchemotherapy. but the brain doesn’t let those same methodsthrough due to something called the blood-brain barrier. this is a membrane surrounding the brain thatkeeps out circulating blood and prevents the brain from being exposed to harmful chemicals. unfortunately, this also means it blocks mostchemotherapy drugs that would be effective against glioblastoma.

that’s where salmonella comes in. but not just any, run of the mill, uncookedchicken-based salmonella. researchers were able to genetically alterthe makeup of the bacteria so it was missing a key amino acid called purine, which is commonlyfound in tumors. it was also programmed to produce harmfulcompounds that cause cancer cells to self-destruct in low-oxygen environments — inside a braintumor, for example. when the bacteria is injected into the brain,it bee-lines to get to the purine in the tumors and then releases its compounds to kill thecells. then, when the tumors are gone and there isno purine left, the salmonella dies as well.

and just to make sure that the salmonellaitself doesn’t actually make you sick, the team deactivated its toxicity. science is magic. this method was tried out in rats, and resultedin extending the life of 20% of those treated by roughly 100 days, which equates about 10human years. trials to genetically modify other kinds ofbacteria have been used for years. insulin can be produced for medicinal useby a genetically modified type of e coli, and another strain of e. coli can be alteredto act as an appetite suppressant, potentially leading to an obesity cure.

there are some problems we humans can’tsolve on their own; sometimes, we need a little genetically modified organism to do the jobfor us. salmonella's normally associated with foodpoisoning but do you even know what that is? find out in this video here. do you have any other crazy medical curesyou want us to look into? let us know down in the comments and makesure you subscribe for more dnews. thanks for tuning in.