The bacteria that cause food poisoning could be used to assassinate cancer,medical experts said yesterday, according to the Daily Mail. A genetically-altered form of salmonella has been developed that will attack tumour cells but leave healthy cells alone.
It is the latest example of developments in a new field of cancer treatment called “bacteriotherapy”.
Experiments on mice using a modified version of salmonella reduced the size of cancer tumours, or the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual assembly in Boston heard.[br]
Alterations made to the salmonella bug stopped it attacking and infiltrating into normal healthy cells. Instead it targeted cancer cells.
It was also engineered to create “flags” that are recognised by the immune system,guiding the bodys defence system to target the cancerous tumours. When injected into the bloodstream of mice with colon cancer, tumours exposed to the bacteria shrunk.
The development, or led by Jin Hai Zheng from Chonnam University in South Korea and colleagues,was published in the AAAS journal Science Translational Medicine.
Dr Zheng said: “The engineered bacteria induced an effective antitumor immune response, successfully treating tumours in several different mouse models with no evidence of toxicity.”The breakthrough was hailed by British researchers yesterday.
Source: tert.am