A strain of bacteria from the genus Clostridium, which destroys cancer cells
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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According to the new method, a soil bacterium from the clostridium genus will look for cancerous tumors in the human body: after settling in a tumor, it will begin to synthesize an enzyme that turns an inactive antitumor drug into an active killer of cancer cells.
The fantasy of researchers dealing with the problem of cancer is truly inexhaustible. Scientists from the University of Maastricht (the Netherlands) and the University of Nottingham (UK) have created a strain of bacteria from the genus Clostridium, which will help to destroy malignant tumors. The authors reported their results at the autumn congress of the Society for General Microbiology; Clinical trials of the proposed method are planned for 2013.
Anaerobic clostridia are one of the oldest groups of microorganisms that have been leading their ancestry since the time when there was no oxygen atmosphere on Earth yet. Now they live in anoxic ecological niches. Among them there are natural human symbionts, and the most dangerous pathogens are pathogens of tetanus, gas gangrene and botulism.
The species that they decided to throw into the fight against cancer is called Clostridium sporogenes; this bacterium is widespread in the soil. Adverse conditions induce clostridia to form spores, and this is the basis of the proposed method. After the introduction of human spores, bacteria will begin to develop only in conditions of almost complete absence of oxygen. And the most optimal place for them will be the core of the tumor. As scientists say, a bacterium does not even need to be specifically trained to detect a tumor, introducing additional genes into it: it will find the target itself.
But this is only half the case. Without genetic modifications, the method still did not happen: Clostridium sporogenes is supplied with an "advanced" version of a bacterial enzyme of its own. The modified gene produces large amounts of this enzyme, necessary for the conversion of an antitumor drug, which in an inactive form is introduced after the bacterium.
So, we get the following chain: the bacterial spasm, turning into an anoxic tumor, turns into a bacterium and begins to synthesize an enzyme that breaks down a drug that kills cancer cells. For healthy tissues, the drug in an inactive form is safe, and this solves the problem of the specificity of chemotherapy and relieves the patient's body of the general drug poisoning. This method, however, is unsuitable for leukemia, which, unlike other tumors, does not look like a clear, dense formation. Clinical trials, of course, will be decisive, but still the idea of an anaerobic bacterium, falling only in the tumor and nowhere else, looks a bit fantastic.
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