Self-Destructing Salmonella Bacteria Could Shrink Cancer Cells

Salmonella bacteria are engineered to self-destruct in the tumor by releasing toxins to stop the growth of a tumor. This method releases drugs to shrink cancer cells.

Bacteria that are known to cause infections have been genetically engineered to deliver an anti-tumor toxin to fight cancer. Jeff Hasty and his team at the University of California, San Diego, have engineered Salmonella bacteria to attack the parts of the tumors in mice that are most difficult to treat. The bacteria will self-destruct after completing their mission.

Salmonella bacteria that survive without oxygen are well-equipped to live in an anaerobic environment within a tumor.

Light Waves may Help Fight Cancer in Future
Researchers from the National Cancer Institute in Maryland say that light waves could be used to provide highly targeted treatment for cancer.

‘The researchers programmed Salmonella bacteria to self-destruct and break open after a certain number of them had accumulated in the tumor spot.’

“It’s only natural that some bacteria have evolved to thrive in tumors,” says Hasty. The researchers used the blood vessels inside the tumors as a way to deliver chemotherapy. But the innermost parts of a tumor does not have blood vessels.

The researchers were inspired by the ability of Salmonella to live in these areas. Hasty’s team engineered the strains Salmonella bacteria to produce three types of cancer-killing drug:

One that destroys cell walls
One that alerts the body’s immune system and
One that triggers cells to die

The researchers programmed the bacteria to self-destruct and break open after a certain number of them had accumulated in the same spot. “It’s basically a kamikaze mission,” said Hasty.

Terahertz Radiation Increases Production of Proteins to Fight Cancer but also Damages DNA
A new study has found that Terahertz (THz) radiation, a section of electromagnetic spectrum between microwave and infrared light, may be effective in fighting cancer.

In mice that had liver tumors, the engineered bacteria traveled directly to the anaerobic regions of the tumors. The researchers found that when the mice were given bacteria that released all the three drugs, their tumors stopped growing.

When the mice were given a combination of bacteria and chemotherapy, their tumors shrank in size and their life expectancy increased by 50 percent.

Silencing Gene To Fight Cancer In Both Children And Adults
A novel treatment pioneered by Australian scientists could help fight childhood cancer and also offer hope to adults with lung cancer.

The idea of using Salmonella as a weapon to fight cancer has been around sometime, said, Bert Vogelstein at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who led one of the first experiments to try to harness bacteria as anti-cancer assassins 15 years ago.

“But every advance is good news. being able to successfully deploy bacteria against things that attack the body would be a game changer.”

Tiny Drug Transporter to Fight Cancer Cells Developed
Researchers have developed a nano-sized drug transporter that has the ability to silence damaging genes by finding the equivalent of an expressway into a target cell.

This new method is the first to deliver drugs by programming bacteria to break apart and die. This technique releases drugs and also keeps the number of bacteria under control.

“The major advance is that this is a way to provide sustained release of therapeutics in tumors,” says Neil Forbes at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

How bacteria get to the liver tumors when fed to the mice is not exactly known, said Hasty. Bacteria could have probably traveled through the hepatic portal vein.

Source-Medindia