A bacterium from the intestines of Japanese tree frogs has "exhibited remarkably potent" tumor-killing abilities when administered intravenously, outperforming current standard therapies and paving the way for an entirely new approach to treating cancer.

TL;DR - Ewingella americana is a git microbe which when injected in mouse veins preferentially accumulates around oxygen starved environment, that is a rapidly divided tumor. it also brings immune response around tumor, so your immune system learns to fight it. Still in Mouse phase. but toxicologically safe so could be done in human soon. almost no major side effects (just inflamation)

  • finallymadeanaccount@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    What leads scientists to get the idea to do this kind of thing.

    “Hmm … y’know what, Earl, I think I’m gonna look in this frog’s gut to see if I can cure cancer”.

    “Capital idea, Elaine! I was gonna jam my hand up this rhino, but you make much more sense!”

    • sga@piefed.socialOPMEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      as someone who is doing some kind of science - titles are a lot more fancier and designd for absurdity. Often, the decision to perform something is a lot more logical than dciding random animals to test from. for example, some of the people from their group may already have been studying that specific frog line for some reason (maybe for it’s gut only), for example, they may have observed that these frogs live a long life or something, then they decided to find why is that, and may hav ecome to conclusion that it is this gut bacterium. or maybe they may hav eknown of this bacterium, and found out where they could source more of this.

      but sometimes, it is totally random luck, lik you accidentally messed up experiement, and spilled some unrelated gut juice from a frog from a separate experiment, and it just so have happened to worked, so you now studied it closely.

      I have absolutely no idea what may have happened in this one, and i am not a biologist, so do not know what is the usual way, but it is usually among these.

    • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.worldEnglish
      102·
      2 months ago

      let’s be honest, if we create an immortality serum and give it to a mouse, that mouse won’t be immortal, it’ll be dissected after a few years to check the insides.

        • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          I assumed medical kind of immortality, not magic. obviously that mouse is dead for the autopsy, I am not assuming the mouse will remain alive while they are being chopped up, and will outlive the heat death of the universe

      • thevoidzero@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Some lab animals escape, notable ones are octopi. They are also known to kill their handler (abusive ones, anecdotally)

    • BodyPower@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      2 months ago

      You can have it right now. Just go out and find a frog. Open it’s stomach and rub is content on your cancer region. Simple really.

      • sga@piefed.socialOPMEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        it has to be injected into veins, so do a injection dose (/s just in case)

  • Nomorereddit@lemmy.todayEnglish
    105·
    2 months ago

    I’ve probably read about hundreds of treatments that cure small animals like mice and frogs. Wake me when that s*** is proven on humans

    • Nurse_Robot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      2 months ago

      We have hundreds of more treatments, there are hundreds (thousands?) of cancer variants, and every year we get more and better treatments. It’s a slow but steady march

    • 0ops@piefed.zipEnglish
      12·
      2 months ago

      We are though all the time. You have to remember that cancer isn’t a single disease but a broad category of diseases, and treatments vary.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      I’m 54. Cancer was a death sentence when I was young. Cures? LOL, how about detection? Forget it. You weren’t getting diagnosed until it was way too late. And we had jack shit for medicine once we caught it.

      In the 90s magazines used to publish articles about a “silver bullet” for cancer. Exactly the sort of thing you’re talking about. We collectively woke up and realized there would never be such a thing. LOL, the articles stopped overnight. :)

      Remember working with a guy in 1993 whose skin was hideous with skin cancer. Haven’t seen such a human since. Skin cancer was a pretty big deal a couple of decades ago. People regularly died of it. Now it seems mostly beaten. Haven’t heard of a person dying from skin cancer this century.

      I suspect a tiny spot on my face is cancer. My body seems to have mostly beaten it. But if it ever grows again, I know they can zap it with a simple outpatient procedure. That sort of thing could have been the beginning of the end when I was a child.

      Don’t get me wrong, I’d personally shit bricks if the doc found even minor cancer, but at least I’d have a chance in 2025.