Clostridium spores are now showing promising results within a bacteria injection to help stall the growth of tumors and cancerous cells. Tumors from breast cancer and melanoma reacted very well to the injections and are the basis to the excitement to the possibility to treat cancer with the bacteria.
Researchers predict that the spores that are injected will cause an inflammatory response. The inflammatory response should then create an immune response that would help reveal some anticancer properties. When researches put it to the test, they found out that they predicted correct in 11 patients, allowing for a green light to pursue the strategy. Unfortunately researches did not think of the size of the dose as a big issue, but it turns out to be a key factor in applying the treatment. 3 patients with the highest doses developed gangrene and sepsis, dangerous and life threatening infections.
The bacteria while regulated with the proper doses is said to release enzymes that track and break down tumor cells and also causing the body to go into an inflammatory state to also kill off the cancer. Everything is surface level but excitement spurs as researchers plan to dive deeper into bacteria injections.
This type of treatment or treatment-in-trial is most interesting because tumors can be very hard to treat, since things like chemotherapy or radiation therapy are sometimes not very effective. Drugs can also be ineffective because blood vessels do not travel through them, which the drugs cannot reach the tumors. It will not be its very own treatment, but rather a way to help chemotherapy and other conventional treatments be more effective.
Bacteria is a carcinogen, meaning that it can or will cause cancer. It can make the cancer more aggressive or the condition will worsen. Inflammasome pathways can be activated with salmonella by destroying the signals that cancer cells have between each other. This then helps inflammatory cytokines inside tumors where the growth of the tumors are significantly stalled. Almost exactly the same as other new treatments that freeze cancer cells in place and then swept with a conventional treatment.
Bacteria used to be an enemy, but now the manipulation in cancer therapy has made it into an ally. Bacterias side effects in cancer therapy were uncontrollable before but with new advancements it is possible to get the desired results with little to no side effects at all. New bacterias found with capabilities to provide potential cancer therapy and also showing significant tumor suppression. The use of bacteria is not something that is new but it is new in the case that it is actually useful.
Researches have yet to launch a bigger study on human patients. Current results are from a handful of people and a majority are from mice. If the models of the mice trials work as good as they do with humans then chemotherapies effectiveness will be significantly increased and be able to reach hard to treat tumors.
