Single Dose of Frog-Derived Gut Bacterium Eradicates 100% of Tumors in Mice(thefocalpoints.com) |
Single Dose of Frog-Derived Gut Bacterium Eradicates 100% of Tumors in Mice(thefocalpoints.com) |
Seriously though, we are living in an era where the more the science broadens its horizons, the more it just looks like plain ol' witchcraft.
I'm hoping there'll be some uses for figs we haven't thought of, next ..
https://radiolab.org/podcast/best-medicine
They followed a 1100 year old medicine recipe and found the resulting salve was effective against MRSA in their test.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/06ab/f83d30ec00bb902bb1aa37...
They get all the good medical breakthroughs.
Vs. there's a whole lotta of money to be made in mouse medicine.
Symbolic, perhaps?
Given that many cancer sufferers are immunocompromised, this isn't necessarily a silver bullet, although it is an interesting result.
Likely too late for a particular person in my life, but hopefully not too late for others.
They used mice, because they are good for early tries. The researchers had 9 bacterias and only 1 was successful. Experiments in mice are cheaper and have less ethical problems than experiments in humans. (Hey! They even injected the cancer cells in mice and waited a week until it grow. Nobody will approve something like that in humans.)
The title claims that the tumos were eradicated. The title hides that it was a small tumor they injected in the mice and more importantly that it disappeared for two weeks until the experiment ended. It's difficult to guess if it will be useful for humans with bigger tumors because they are harder to detect, and it would work for a interesting enough period like 5 years.
There is also and old comment by octaane https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46308732 I'll quote it partially:
> Several things trigger my bullshit meter. Quote:
>> "This dramatically surpasses the therapeutic efficacy of current standard treatments, including immune checkpoint inhibitors (anti-PD-L1 antibody) and liposomal doxorubicin (chemotherapy agents)"
> PD-L1 monoclonal antibodies are only effective against cancers that are PD-L1 positive. [...] Many tumor types are not PD-l1 positive.
> Doxy is an ancient SOC chemo.
> [...]
> The three bacterial strains that successfully induced tumor regression (E. americana, C. portucalensis, and E. ludwigii) were all identified as facultative anaerobic bacteria.
> This finding is consistent with established principles of bacterial cancer therapy, as anaerobic bacteria possess the unique capability to selectively accumulate and colonize within solid tumors due to the characteristically hypoxic and immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment.
> This selective tumor colonization likely enabled efficient intratumoral bacterial proliferation and, in conjunction with activated immune cell responses, contributed significantly to the observed tumor regression phenomena.
Said in other words, the tumours created the ideal environment for anaerobic bacteria to multiply. Eventually causing a reaction from the body’s own immune response (which ignored the tumour but successfully detected the bacterial growth).
So one of the reasons this worked well was that the bacteria acted as a target for the immune cells, and they proliferated inside the tumour thus weakening it.
More like, what's a mouse gonna do about it?
> Outperforming chemotherapy and immunotherapy
And then later:
> As a facultative anaerobe, it preferentially accumulates within the hypoxic tumor microenvironment, where it rapidly proliferates and exerts direct cytotoxic effects while simultaneously activating a broad immune response. Within hours, tumors become infiltrated with T cells, B cells, and neutrophils, accompanied by surges in key inflammatory cytokines like TNF-α and IFN-γ.
So this is immunotherapy. Although it is clever immunotherapy. Gut bacteria doesn't usually survive long in the bloodstream because there's too much oxygen present (that's part of why it's gut bacteria, its unlikely to go all Leeroy Jenkins on the rest of the organism).
The TME is often so densely packed with growth that its less oxidative than surrounding tissue. So the bacteria that don't find a tumor don't last long enough to cause problems and the ones that do find one see it as a bit of a refuge from the problematic environment and colonize it specifically, throwing off whatever subterfuge the tumor was using to keep the immune system from getting involved.
It's a bit like throwing a brick through the window of a bank that was being quietly robbed by somebody else. The cops show up and realize they've been overlooking a separate problem.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104839/?ref_=fn_t_1
In it, Connery finds what looks to be a rare natural cure to all cancer in the Rain Forest (spoiler: not a frog, but equally as weird), and is literally battling the nearby deforesting and bulldozers. For a Sean Connery movie it was bizarre (As a young teen, I saw it in the theaters.. quite a bit less action than a 007 movie but good drama and dramatic Sean Connery acting).
Connery definitely starred in even weirder movies. Have you seen Zardoz?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070948/
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNmI2NjI2OWYtMzU5NS00...
Buddy, if you're trying to tell me it's weirder than Darby O'Gill and the Little People, I am going to need more than Sir Connery in a ponytail.
Check out Zardoz: Connery with a ponytail, a pistol in hand, wearing thigh-high boots and a mankini.
And a giant flying stone head that vomits guns.
I am not joking.
Ewingella Americana itself is a quite common bacterial species, but it seems that the effective strain is the frog-derived and cultivated one. So don't go injecting yourself with a random E. Americana.
Full article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2025.2...
Also who thinks -- "hmm we've found a new random bacteria --- let's give a bunch of tumors to mice and then IV inject this random thing into them!"?
There must have been something about the microbe that gave them a hint. Maybe it's in the cited original article and was left out of the blog post.
> happily
I think you answered your own question really, a lot of animals just enjoy eating them (humans included!)
One theory of where posts like this come from: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2527316123
Thank you for this; I'd not seen it, but needed to.
Definitely changing, I'm not so sure about destroying. Your house displaced an ecosystem so you could live there but I bet in your ethical system that's fine right? What a surprise
Curing cancer in a mouse model is not at all uncommon in new therapies. Mouse models like this are vastly easier to treat than real world cancer for a bunch of reasons. Fully curing mice is the baseline for a treatment to even be considered for further evaluation. And even then very few therapies end up succeeding in humans - low single digit percent.
So yes, another possible treatment. But not at all a breakthrough.
If it never works as well if at all in humans, maybe mice are too different?
Edit: Ignore me, I'm sleepy and can't read, lol
Is there any other source?
CPMV for Cancer.
Cowpeas are also known as Black-Eyed Peas; which are regarded as good luck and used to be in pastures and thereby human diets.
Backwards logic. If they're fond of it then they're the people to be arguing against, no?
For those unfamiliar with the reference, in Hitchikers guide to the galaxy series, Mice are projections of hyper intelligent extra terrestrial beings from a higher dimension who commission the creation of planet earth complete with fossils as a giant organic computer
They make fun affectionate pets if you can stomach the idea that they will die on you.
And far better to be hiding, than watching and playing a fiddle from atop some convenient high wall. Or plotting how to destroy your fellow alpha arsonists next.
There are people who fervently believe that the world's problems are caused by something like international Jewry or lack of sufficient religiosity or existence of democracy. I fervently hope that they don't get to succeed in their solutions.
EDIT: we did revert about 50% of the lawn to native wetland/prairie and we aim to raise that number over time.
You’ll find it’s less effort to mouseproof sheds than pretty much any other option.
Bucket traps with water are a good option. They auto-reset. They don’t maim and are no threat to cats/dogs like spring traps, do not kill predators and increase mouse populations like poison does. They’re more humane than glue, for sure.
We use a combination of those, spring traps (if we can put them in the path the mice take) and electrocution traps (in the house). We’ve killed 100’s of mice.
The other important thing to do is remove all piles of anything within 100 ft of all structures. Wetland/prairie is a good plan if you have a buffer zone.
Under no circumstances call Orkin. Complete waste of time. This comment contains more training than their technicians get, and they don’t do their jobs anyway.
(They can’t taste capsaicin, though now that I know that exists, I’ll pick some up for other projects!)
Because, per the article, the environmental disasters under "Socialist Russia" seem to match many of the ones in "Capitalist America". The thing in common between the two seems to be rich oligarchs controlling government, and leveraging their power to extract profits, with little regard given to the proles or the environment.
Crazy how much the supposedly "pro-capitalist" right wing mirrors the supposedly "Socialist Russia" sometimes.
As a child, I experienced the reality of "socialism", where every word used by the ruling elites meant something very different from what it was claimed to mean.
Unfortunately, already for more than a quarter of century USA and most "capitalistic" countries every year become more and more alike to the former socialist countries, from all points of view, like great wealth inequality, markets dominated by quasi-monopolies, non-existent political opposition, mass surveillance of the population, confusing propaganda in all mass-media, less and less chances to afford to truly be the owner of many kinds of things, like houses, cars or computers. If your car or your computer or your smartphone or your TV set do whatever their vendor or the government want, instead of doing what you want, then obviously you are not their owner.
Rather than blaming "capitalism" as a whole, I would more put the blame on our ability to ignore negative externalities when pricing things in. That occurs just as much in any other economic system.
This critique doesn't make sense. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. You're actually a capitalist whether you know it or not and you agree with capitalism at a rudimentary level. Your complaint about "power in the hands of the wealthiest" is a matter of government dysfunction, not the economic system. In fact, the economic system, capitalism, is performing well in spite of the poor performance of the governmental system.
Countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Norway which are often hailed as model countries for livability and "democratic socialist" states are highly capitalistic, and by some measures more so even than the United States.
In this chain of conversation the grandparent wrote something about the 1% destroying the planet. That's a red herring. Everyone jetting around the world taking vacation, buying bottled water, driving cars, eating cheeseburgers, you name it are doing much more actual damage than just the 1% who, while doing a disproportionate amount of climate damage (however we want to measure that) are not responsible for most of the total amount of climate damage. That's not to excuse them, of course, and as a matter of government dysfunction for example ask why luxury goods like private jets or yachts aren't taxed at a much higher rate, or perhaps aviation fuel for private use (I'm not suggesting these are good or bad policies, but just examples at the surface level).
If you want to address climate change you have to not only demand reform across the board, but make personal changes in your own life. If you are unwilling to do that, you'll find yourself in similar company, shouting from the rooftops if only we taxed the billionaires and finding nothing was done to help or fix the situation.
"putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest."
Do you think it is? Then let some of the wealthiest try to obtain a permit in downtown SF for a mere block of flats, the likes of which used to be built by the thousands 100 years ago. If it takes less than a decade, I would be surprised.
There is a lot of power outside the private sector. Every environmental or political group that sues any project does, in fact, wield a lot of power of the "veto" variety, which used to be prerogative of kings.
Sure that you can get a permit somewhere, that is just federalism. But you may not get it where you want it, and given that data centers are now a part of the general culture war, I expect that many blue states will now attempt to regulate them out of existence, at least in urban and semi-urban areas.
Yeah, socialism was abandoned precisely because capitalism was better. By the 1980s, residents of Central Europe could quite clearly compare and saw that their western neighbours were richer, healthier and enjoyed cleaner air and water than those of the "Camp of Progress".
Market economy + democracy beats top-down enforced utopian intellectual projects like a Marxist-Leninist state by a difference of a league.
We tried that on our own people so that you don't have to.
nothing other than the prosperity that capitalism generates is inherently bad for the environment. yeah if you pull people out of poverty their carbon footprint will probably increase. but the alternative is them living in poverty and starving under a communist system (like always)
the amount of goods and services capitalism has generated has saved so many lives. we have huge amounts of excess food we send across the world.
It's like saying desktop enshittification has been caused by Microsoft. This is true in our timeline, even though if Apple had owned the desktop for 30 years they also would have enshittified it.
The very fact that the question "Quod custodiet ipsos custodes?" (who will guard the guards themselves?) was originally formulated in Latin is an indication of how long has this been going on.
yeah well that's because the execution matters and turns out when you give people power to choose who gets what, they abuse it. go figure.
But surely there’s a more sane option than under regulated capitalism with a problematic wealth distribution and fucked up incentives that encourage short term profit at the expense of society, environment and all else?
your system should work with human nature or it will never work.
capitalism exploits greed to generate prosperity. socialism falls under greed.
and no there's not a better solution, or at least it hasn't been found yet. if it was it'd still be a form of capitalism, not the other side of the spectrum.
but we disagree on the effects of the current system. capitalism has not been at the expense of society, the opposite in fact. we've had so much prosperity due to it.
same with the environment really. communist countries don't really have better air quality, worse in fact! US has the money from capitalism to develop clean tech.
Communism is an erroneous idea. It starts from a correct premise, that humans who have accumulated much wealth are able to use it abusively for accumulating more and more wealth at the expense of the others, and this positive feedback cannot be stopped without some kind of regulation.
However, the solution proposed by communism is an illusion that cannot work with real humans. The communist solution is to confiscate everything valuable from all citizens and put it under the management of the state bureaucrats, who supposedly will administrate it efficiently and in such a manner as to produce maximum benefits for all citizens.
The reality is that of course the communist bureaucrats are composed of the same people who succeed to become politicians or managers everywhere, i.e. those for whom the priority is to satisfy their own interests and greed, and not the interests of the entire society.
Therefore in all socialist/communist countries, those who were supposed to manage resources in the name of the "entire society" behaved exactly like the owners of those resources, so they lived like US millionaires or even billionaires, while most of the population lived in poverty, because all what their parents or grand-parents had in the past had been confiscated and now they were at the mercy of their managers, who decided unilaterally what they should be allowed to work and what they should receive to be able to live.
The only solution that could work would be the exact opposite of communism. Instead of centralizing everything, the production of at least all the things strictly necessary for living should be as distributed as possible, done by numerous small local companies, not by a few huge global monopolies.
Instead of having 3 producers of memory chips for the entire Earth, there should be at least 3 or 4 in every country. Similarly for any other industrial product.
Unfortunately that is extremely unlikely to happen because during the last decades everything has evolved in the opposite direction.
To continue with the same example, when I was young a large fraction of the European countries were still able to make integrated circuits and computer memories, even many of the East-European countries. But then one-by-one most electronics or computing companies have been bought or closed, until none survived. An important role in the disappearance of the electronics industries in most countries had been that of USA, who used various means of pressure and blackmailing to prevent other countries to enact protectionist measures favoring their internal producers against US companies, i.e. exactly what now USA itself uses against China.
Communism seeks to mitigate or avoid this human instinct, often failing.
Capitalism throws its hands in the air and says "ok, be greedy and selfish, ignore others and society, and if we're lucky, and it sometimes provides any societal benefit, that's purely incidental and secondary to you making money".
