They used mice, because they 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 something like that in humans.)
The title claims that the tumos were eradicated. The title hides that it was a small tumor they injected in the mice and more importantly that it disappeared for two weeks until the experiment ended. It's difficult to guess if it will be useful for humans with bigger tumors because they are harder to detect, and it would work for a interesting enough period like 5 years.
> 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 PD-L1 positive. [...] Many tumor types are not PD-l1 positive.
I disagree that the title "hides" that the title was small and that it disappeared for two weeks. The surviving contingent on the E. americana strain was evaluated for 60 days, and the tumor doesn't look particularly small based on the picture on page 8 of the paper. I think the study size is small (n=5) so we'd like to see more large-scale studies next, but it's already a strong result to show 5/5 (100%) at p < 0.0001 for multiple primary endpoints and the absence of success from comparable bacteria is helpful to frame future research. The absence of long-term side effects and only transient weight-loss followed by 15-day weight gain is also intriguing. I'm not a doctor, oncologist, or cancer researcher, but the methodology looks sound and appropriate to me, as does the title, based on reading the paper.
> The surviving contingent on the E. americana strain was evaluated for 60 days
The article says
> The surviving contingent on the E. americana strain was evaluated for 60 days (Supplementary Figure S5).
The supplementary material only shows a reshot with cancer cells at the day 30. All the other parts also days a total of 60 days. At day 0 the cancer cells were injected, approximately at day 10 the bacteria were injected, and approximately at day 20 the cancer disappeared. So correct my initial comment and say that it's 40 days cancer free.
When the title says "eradication" most people interpret "forever". That is too optimistic and unrealistic, but a 5 years survival rate is somewhat a standard point. 15 or 40 days is too short to know if there are some hidden metastasis, they need more time to grow and be visible.
Also, the initial treatment is only 10 days after the initial shot with cancer cells. IIRC it's an aggressive cancer variant in mice variant that has a crappy inmune system. Gut cancer in humans are detected when they block the guts or bleed or in periodic colonoscopy every few years, so they usually have more than 10 days to develop before detection.
Note that this setup in mice is good for initial test and to filter the promising treatments as they did, but it's difficult to extrapolate to long term treatment of humans.
For those unfamiliar with the reference, in Hitchikers guide to the galaxy series, Mice are projections of hyper intelligent extra terrestrial beings from a higher dimension who commission the creation of planet earth complete with fossils as a giant organic computer
Maybe you just didn't really see it. I've begun to notice that I don't even see certain things that I read, especially if I'm not intellectually prepared to receive them. I vaguely remembered the mice and the earth being a computer (once prompted by the post), but I had no idea about the mice being 3D projections of a multi-dimensional being. I'm pretty sure that idea was either not something I truly comprehended at 20 and/or I thought it was stupid/random (my opinion on the book as a whole), so the thought never even sank in.
Other times I just don't see something for other reasons. I read Augustine's Confessions and never saw the famous line "our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee", which is in the THIRD sentence! I'm not sure if the antiquated English [1] threw me off, or what. In fact, I don't remember seeing pretty much every quote people take from Confessions, besides the pear episode. Some of those are theological ideas that are just completely new, some are probably my annoyance at his "confessing" things that aren't really faults [2], and my annoyance at his insistence on quoting the Bible everywhere he could [3]. But I find it strange that I seemed to have simply not seen most of what other people get out of it.
[1] Rant: don't bother reading the out of copyright translations of ancient works, because the 1800s and early 1900s seemed to think that because the works are old, it should be translated into old English. This is stupid. Augustine didn't write in 500 year old Latin, so translating it into 500 year old English is mistranslation.
[2] I am starting to think that maybe "confess" might have meant something different, and it is not confessing a faults but a statement of beliefs.
[3] I suspect that ancient ideas of rhetoric valued quoting trusted sources a lot, kind of how classical Chinese literature quotes older classic literature a lot. Augustine, being a professional rhetorician, would in that case be expected to do that. But it drove me nuts.
> The three bacterial strains that successfully induced tumor regression (E. americana, C. portucalensis, and E. ludwigii) were all identified as facultative anaerobic bacteria.
> This finding is consistent with established principles of bacterial cancer therapy, as anaerobic bacteria possess the unique capability to selectively accumulate and colonize within solid tumors due to the characteristically hypoxic and immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment.
> This selective tumor colonization likely enabled efficient intratumoral bacterial proliferation and, in conjunction with activated immune cell responses, contributed significantly to the observed tumor regression phenomena.
Said in other words, the tumours created the ideal environment for anaerobic bacteria to multiply. Eventually causing a reaction from the body’s own immune response (which ignored the tumour but successfully detected the bacterial growth).
So one of the reasons this worked well was that the bacteria acted as a target for the immune cells, and they proliferated inside the tumour thus weakening it.
I think you overestimate the "interesting enough period". How much would it be worth for some patients to go into remission for a year? or even 6 months? The answer is a lot
Every additional day is a blessing, but each treatment has possible nasty side effects, require time for administration [1], time to fill the insurance paperwork and a cost that sometimes must be covered by the family. You don't want to waste a full week locked inside a hospital to get 1 extra day.
Anyway, 5 years is a long time, so I agree shorter times are useful and interesting. But, 5 years is used as an arbitrary threshold like in https://www.webmd.com/cancer/remission-what-does-it-mean so I think it's a good comparison to put "eradicate" in the title.
Don't know about mice, but rats more or less have a 50% tumor/cancer chance if they really do get to live 1+ years. I think for some lines it goes up to 90%+.
Every rat (4 now) I've owned except one has died of cancer. Or at least, they died with cancer, I'm not a veterinarian. The one that didn't got the flu or something at 6 months and died of some respiratory issue.
There's nothing subtle about cancer in rats, especially the females. They're terribly prone to breast cancer and female rat has a lot of breasts. You'll see golf ball sized things in no time unless you're willing to pay for removals. Very common and any vet will spot it.
When they get a 'lump' it grows real quick. They make lovely, interactive pets, and very intelligent but they will break your heart and die too soon.
It is an immunity reaction. The bacteria multiplied in the tumors until they triggered an immunity response, which caused the body to destroy the tumors along with the bacteria. Whether or not it translates to humans remains to be seen.
They used mice, because they 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 something like that in humans.)
The title claims that the tumos were eradicated. The title hides that it was a small tumor they injected in the mice and more importantly that it disappeared for two weeks until the experiment ended. It's difficult to guess if it will be useful for humans with bigger tumors because they are harder to detect, and it would work for a interesting enough period like 5 years.
There is also and old comment by octaane https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46308732 I'll quote it partially:
> 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 PD-L1 positive. [...] Many tumor types are not PD-l1 positive.
> Doxy is an ancient SOC chemo.
> [...]