8 ms·
Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice
- DivingForGold 10mo ago[flagged]
- MangoToupe 10mo agoI'm happy to wait for the experimentation to weigh in for this one dawg
- eek2121 10mo agoI know hearing this gets old, however, please review sources outside of LLMs for accuracy. LLMs take a whole bunch off stuff from all over the internet and distill it down to something you can consume. Those sources include everything from reddit to a certain de-wormer that folks still think treats COVID (side note: I've a few long COVID victims in a support group I am in, and they are not happy about the disinfo that was spread, at any rate)...LLMs/"AI" does not and cannot innovate, it can only take all existing information it knows, mash it all together, and present you with a result according to what the model is trained on. I'm not against AI summaries being on HN, however, users should verify and cite sources so others can verify. However, I'm just a normal nerd that wants to fact check stuff. Perhaps I'm wrong in wanting to do this. We'll see.
- brailsafe 10mo ago> I'm not against AI summaries being on HN, however, users should verify and cite sources so others can verify. I don't see how they contribute anything to a discussion. Even a speculative comment organically produced is more worthwhile than feeding a slop machine back into itself. I don't go out for coffee to discuss LLM summaries with friends, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to do that here. Earlier today I asked Gemini Pro to find information on a person's death that was turning up nothing for me otherwise, and it just imagined finding verbatim Obituary quotes in every source, cobbled together vaguely related names, plausible bits and pieces from wherever, almost like it was 2023 again. It ain't search, and it ain't worthwhile; I'd much rather someone ask an llm the question and then post a question out of curiosity based on it, but without the summary itself
- xupybd 10mo agoIt is search if you ask it to produce a list of links. It does well at filtering information for you. Going to primary sources is required to verify what it says but it can reduce the leg work rather a lot.
- roarcher 10mo ago> It is search if you ask it to produce a list of links. Unfortunately it can hallucinate those too. I've had ChatGPT cite countless nonexistent academic papers, complete with links that go nowhere.
- tharkun__ 10mo agoWhich is "fine" so to speak. We do this with using AIs for coding all the time, don't we? As in, we ask it to do things or tell us things about our code base (which we might be new to as well) but essentially use it as a "search engine+" so to speak. Hopefully it's faster and can provide some sort of understanding faster than we could with searching ourselves and building a mental model while doing it. But we still need to ask it for and then follow file and line number references (aka "links") and verify it's true and it got the references right and build enough of a mental model ourselves. With code (at least for our code base) it usually does get that right (the references) and I can verify. I might be biased because I both know our code base very well already (but not everything in detail) and I'm a very suspicious person, questioning everything. With humans it sometimes "drives them crazy" but the LLM doesn't mind when I call its BS over and over. I'm always "right" :P The problem is when you just trust anything it says. I think we need to treat it like a super junior that's trained to very convincingly BS you if it's out of its depth. But it's still great to have said junior do your bidding while you do other things and faster than an actual junior and this junior is available 24/7 (barring any outages ;)).
- anjel 10mo agoAsk it to solve a tough Euler Math puzzle with the search button on and it just copies the answer from the web. Turn search off and it actually computes the answer. Funny how the search button is taken away though.
- DivingForGold 10mo agoI have significant experience in polymer chemistry, as an experiment, I decided to ask gemini some very specific questions to try and back it into a corner, so to speak. It blew me away with the answer, discussing quite a bit of info I was not even aware of.
- jijijijij 10mo agoCool story, bro.
- justinc8687 10mo agoI've had quite good luck asking Gemini and ChatGPT to include links to research papers for every claim they make. Not only can I review at least the abstracts but I find when I do this, they'll retract some of the hallucinations they've have made in prior messages. It almost seems (and maybe they do) in their web searching tools, reread the content they include. Thus, greatly reducing errors, with minimal extra effort on my part.
- cyberax 10mo ago> Could it be that this organism switches to anaerobic respiration when it finds itself inside cancer tissue Unlikely. The leading hypothesis is that mitochondria are a part of the apoptosis cycle, so cells need to disable them to become cancerous. This is called the Warburg effect. There are several drugs that target this mechanism, inhibiting the anaerobic metabolism. They are effective initially, but cancers always find ways to work around them.
- mikeweiss 10mo ago"according to Gemini" ........
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- antdke 10mo agoaCcoRdinG To gEmiNi
- kasperset 10mo agoJust FYI, this study was done in mice.
- anitil 10mo agoAh, I was wondering if it was one of those. And of course there's a relevant xkcd [0] [0] https://xkcd.com/1217/ https://xkcd.com/1217/
- OutOfHere 10mo agoNo, it is not relevant in the least. Murine studies are a standard practice on the path to human trials. Your link is not even about animal studies. It is about a petri dish.
- stephc_int13 10mo agoOf course it was done in mice, tests with animals are obviously mandatory before human trials.
- tyre 10mo agoI would be in favor of adding a standardized [in mice] to the titles of all HN submissions about medical breakthroughs. Most of them end up being in mice and many do not reproduce in humans. It would help, at a glance, to know how significant a study's results are.
- JSR_FDED 10mo agoOr alternatively, some marker to indicate the presence of an “only in mice” comment
- sroussey 10mo agoMaybe we find out why things work in mice and not us.
- gus_massa 10mo agoThis works in mice with small tumors for two weeks until the experiment ends. It's quite different form working in humans with big tumors for 5 years. Mice are good for early tries. The researchers had 9 bacterias and only 1 was successful. Experiments in mice are cheaper and have less ethical problems than experiments in humans. (Hey! They even injected the cancer cells in mice and waited a week until it grow. Nobody will approve that in humans.)
- dylan604 10mo agoNow I can't wait for the conspiracy theory types to say this proves reptilian people theories. Lizard people just giving to help us accept them type of stuff, and maybe prove how the ape descendants need the lizard people.
- utopcell 10mo agoNeed the what now?
- Terr_ 10mo agoI believe parent-poster is making a joke at the expense of conspiracy-theorists who believe in lizard-people, rather than endorsing the idea. To paraphrase, something like: "This news article links human survival to something taken from amphibians and reptiles. There are conspiracy-theorists who posit the existence of Lizard people. It would be amusing if those humans discovered this news, and claimed it was a plot by Lizard People to make us dependent on them." So there, I think I explained the joke... which isn't necessarily a good thing. In the words of E.B. White: > Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process. Now, I could work that new amphibian-connection into another joke... But let's face it, it would be "too meta" at this point.
- tombert 10mo agoI feel like sometimes the actual act of explaining the joke can actually be funnier than the joke itself. Occasionally when I can explain a super dirty joke with a deadpan and matter-of-fact tone people will laugh more than they would have if they had actually gotten the joke in the first place.
- dylan604 10mo agoI'll agree that my attempt at humor was bested by someone else's explanation being much more comical
- torben-friis 10mo ago100% response, zero side effects? This sounds like world changing news. Can anyone with domain expertise explain the catch, if any?
- estearum 10mo agoThe catch is that there are thousands of promising therapies in animal models/pre-human testing. A very very tiny fraction of them will ever make it to market for a variety of both good and not-good reasons.
- colordrops 10mo agoWhat's the difference between a good and not-good reason to not go to market?
- hyc_symas 10mo agoA lot of potential treatments are too easily available and can't be patented. If a big pharma company can't make massive profit from it, they won't bother bringing it to market. Consider that a not-good reason. Other treatments may eventually prove to have too many serious negative side effects. That's a good reason to abandon them.
- megaman821 10mo agoWhy would a China or India care if it were a viable treatment? Unless a country wants to use their population as lab rats, it takes money and scientists to actually confirm a treatment is safe and effective.
- cluckindan 10mo agoObviously you use the neighboring country’s population, or an ethnic minority, or prisoners, or orphans, or…
- dboreham 10mo ago
- stephc_int13 10mo agoI was impressed by the clarity and terseness of this little article. Is it common practice in the case of scientific articles coming from Japan?
- kasperset 10mo agohttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2025.2599562 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2025.2... Link to the research article. Are you referring to the news release?
- kinj28 10mo agoI have been working with my dad on his cancer treatment since last year. My interest in the topic has only peaked ever since. (Disclaimer- I am an engineer and not a microbiologist/doctor) Mutations and wrong copying of genome happens all the time in the body and some enzyme has the job of correcting the mutated genes so it doesn’t get into the system. Level 2 defence is T cells killing it as identified as foreign body. Thing that baffles me is that I see most work happening to eliminate tumor. To me it sounds a tough problem given the permutation and combination of mutation— roughly few trillions. But I was curious if there is working happening on L1 defence — fixing the enzyme that fixes the wrong copy paste mechanism. Or making the enzyme get more efficient and powerful. Is that line of thought even valid?
- comp_bio 10mo agoThis is a fascinating niche of evolutionary biology that I have worked in for a while. The short answer is that yes, as far as we can tell all organisms evolve increasingly more efficient replication machinery, however at some point the strength of selection is no longer powerful enough to overcome the strength of genetic drift and some degree of error rate persists. As far as we can tell it seems like population size governs where this balance ends up such that small populations have high mutation rates and large populations have reduced mutation rates. Michael Lynch coined the term drift barrier hypothesis to describe this phenomenon. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23077252/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23077252/
- ajuc 10mo agoIf the organism is too efficient at preventing mutations - it would evolve slower, right?
- mfld 10mo agoYes, but note the mutation rate of germline cells - that are passed to your offspring and hence influence evolution - is estimated to be two orders of magnitude lower than other (somatic) cells.
- 10mo ago
- ChrisArchitect 10mo agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46283089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46283089
- octaane 10mo agoSorry, as someone in this field, this is bullshit. It is in mice. Several things trigger my bullshit meter. Quote: "This dramatically surpasses the therapeutic efficacy of current standard treatments, including immune checkpoint inhibitors (anti-PD-L1 antibody) and liposomal doxorubicin (chemotherapy agents)" PD-L1 monoclonal antibodies are only effective against cancers that are, you guessed it, PD-L1 positive. At high percentages, ranging from 1 to 50%. Are these authors even familiar with the state of the art when it comes to cancer medications? Mouse tumors do not equate to people tumors. Many tumor types are not PD-l1 positive. Doxy is an ancient SOC chemo. This is a nothing burger. Give me phase II/III clinical trials, and then let me know what their PFS/OS was after 5 years. and what the medians were at 3- and 5-years. Also, ORR and CR and needed. CAR-T is ahead of the game, and will be the ultimate winner here as it grows to scale.
- kinj28 10mo agoIn my dad’s case- he had gastric melonama. We surgically removed it and as consolidation We administered pd-L1 Immune checkpoint inhibitor. Melonama recurred again in 6 months time. This time in esophagus. As an engineer I think all drugs tested and efficacies studied are on statistically not so significant data points. Given the permutations and combinations far exceed the clinical trials available and hence everything post clinical trial is also just an extended trial. Wonder How to fix this? I am assuming heLa cells etc are also not the right test setup to have better test results.
- octaane 10mo agoKeytruda, pembrolizumab, (what he probably received) can only do so much. If it was in his GI tract it was also elsewhere in multiple places. The PD-L1 drugs at this point have more than 400k patients treated, with decent efficacy. I'm sorry for your loss. If his melanoma had metastasized to his GI tract it was too late for anything except palliative care. This drug has been used in a huge number of patients for more than 11 years; the next gen of drugs is currently being used. I'm sorry for my curt style of writing, but - people like your father have helped pave the way for that next generation of drugs by constraining clinical trial designs.
- johnwheeler 10mo agoI have never once seen a promising cancer treatment I've heard of on the news help people. You hear about the breakthrough treatments all the time, but when people get cancer, all you ever hear about is people getting chemotherapy and radiation. Same old scary shit. Well, I guess Leukemia has been somewhat cured I heard, so that's pretty huge. When I was a kid it was a death sentence IIRC.
- tombert 10mo agoI'm not a doctor, but in some fairness, I think there has been a lot of progress in chemotherapy and radiation. "Increasing 5-year-survivability by 0.5%" doesn't make a fun sexy headline, but that's still an achievement that required a lot of hard work and enough of those happening still adds up. I agree with your overall point though; it's a little annoying that every few weeks we hear about a new experiment that seems to indicate that we'll have a radically new and effective form of treatment for cancer only for it to never materialize.
- bruce511 10mo ago"Cancer" is a term that covers a lot of diseases. So there is a lot of research going into a lot of different things, and hence lots of announcements. "Chemotherapy" again is a loaded term covering a lot of different drugs, drug combinations, protocols and so on. So yeah, a lot of cancer treatment us "chemo" - but today's chemo is far removed from 2000 chemo. 5 year survivability has increased tremendously over the last decades. We're not talking 0.5% here, breast cancer for example has gone from 72% to 93%. Early detection of prostrate cancer has near 100% survivability. But you're right, improving survivability doesn't make for sexy headlines. Yes there's a social media appetite for "breakthroughs", but the underlying "boring" stuff is doing well, and getting better all the time. It's just not "news".
- johnwheeler 10mo agoMy mom died of cancer and had to suffer through chemo. It was in the early 2000s, so I'm curious to know if you know anything about these new chemos and what makes them different.
- inshard 10mo agoThis segment about the mechanism is simple and very profound. I wonder if any cancer researchers here could comment on its universality across various types of cancers: "Tumor-Specific Accumulation Mechanism E. americana selectively accumulates in tumor tissues with zero colonization in normal organs. This remarkable tumor specificity arises from multiple synergistic mechanisms: Hypoxic Environment: The characteristic hypoxia of tumor tissues promotes anaerobic bacterial proliferation Immunosuppressive Environment: CD47 protein expressed by cancer cells creates local immunosuppression, forming a permissive niche for bacterial survival Abnormal Vascular Structure: Tumor vessels are leaky, facilitating bacterial extravasation Metabolic Abnormalities: Tumor-specific metabolites support selective bacterial growth Excellent Safety Profile Comprehensive safety evaluation revealed that E. americana demonstrates: Rapid blood clearance (half-life ~1.2 hours, completely undetectable at 24 hours) Zero bacterial colonization in normal organs including liver, spleen, lung, kidney, and heart Only transient mild inflammatory responses, normalizing within 72 hours No chronic toxicity during 60-day extended observation"
- Smileyferret 10mo agoInteresting article, but in the full paper their key figure (Fig 2) shows their treatment group of n=3 mice completely responded to the bacterial treatment, but their methods say they treated n=5 mice? Could be an honest mistake but that’s a little concerning for data manipulation. Also agree that using a PD-L1 mab feels like it’s for show especially considering the cancer model they’re using (Colon-26) was shown to be substantially less responsive to PD-L1 inhibitors… Not the world’s best paper imo
- nine_k 10mo agoStill the idea is beautiful. Since tumors are oxygen-deficient and suppress the immune response, anaerobic bacteria would proliferate there, and wreak havoc, while in the healthy parts of the organism they would be rapidly eliminated. Additionally, since the bacteria accumulate in the tumor, and the immune system has just responded to their invasion, T-cells will flock to the tumor, destroying what remains of it in due course. As they say, "the fame of a mathematician is measured by the number of poor papers", because pioneering works are often awkward, treading completely unknown ground. Maybe the same applies to biology sometimes?
- snarf21 10mo agoI'm untrained in this area but it sounds like similar ideas I heard of in the last decade where injected tumor with virus (polio?) that quickly kills the tumor but then is easily cured in the rest of the body since we have solutions to them. Is this a similar situation?
- anotherpaul 10mo agoYes in figure 2 it's 3 mice, next figure 3 they also have 5 (panel e)
- somedude89897 10mo agoFigures 2 and 3 seem to be different experiments, with n=3 and n=5, respectively. Both showed 100% survival. Obviously very small sample sizes, but still promising.
- sinnickal 10mo agohttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4155522.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4155522.stm
- isolli 10mo agoIn case people don't want to click on a random link, it is actually quite interesting: Crocodile blood antibiotics hope Scientists are catching crocodiles and sampling their blood in the hope of finding powerful new drugs to fight human infections. Even horrific fighting wounds on the animal heal quickly
- isolli 10mo agoI know we're not supposed to edit titles, but I'm glad the submitter added "in mice". It avoided me quite the disappointment!
- zwnow 10mo agoWho knows how much knowledge we eradicated due to not bothering with climate change and just letting species go extinct. Thankfully these were still here for this discovery.
- ath3nd 10mo ago[dead]
- mawadev 10mo agoIt is my wish and my blessing that this is true
- choeger 10mo agoSo maybe I am too much a layperson here, but even without any direct therapetutic effects, it is pretty remarkable to have an easily scalable mechanism to get self-replicating agents into tumors, but nowhere else, is it not?
- xlbuttplug2 10mo agoEven lay-er person, but maybe the specificity is not that impressive in mice? Perhaps when you scale to more complex animals it is inevitable to see false positives (detrimental effects to healthy cells)?
- somedude89897 10mo agoYes it is amazing! Solid tumors tend to be poorly oxygenated, as they don't have a good network of blood vessels to supply them. The bacteria in these experiments can only live in low oxygen environments, so they will multiply in the tumor and die in any other part of the body they end up in. It's a clever idea, hopefully it will be successful.