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·
    4 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·
      4 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.