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Study: Soil-Borne Bacteria Can Treat Cancer — and More Health Headlines
- Yesterday, University of Waterloo engineers reported that bacteria can colonize and consume tumor cores, with Dr. Aucoin stating, `Bacteria spores enter the tumor, finding an environment where there are lots of nutrients and no oxygen, which this organism prefers, and so it starts eating those nutrients and growing in size.`
- Key to the problem, the core of many solid tumors lacks oxygen and hosts dead cells, creating an oxygen-free and nutrient-rich niche ideal for Clostridium sporogenes, but bacteria die at the tumor outer edge exposed to oxygen.
- Using quorum sensing, researchers ensured the oxygen-tolerance gene activates only after bacteria accumulate, confirmed by GFP tests, as Dr. Brian Ingalls said, `Using synthetic biology, we built something like an electrical circuit, but instead of wires we used pieces of DNA`.
- Researchers now plan to combine both genetic systems and advance to pre-clinical tumour testing, a project begun by PhD student Bahram Zargar under Dr. Pu Chen with CREM Co Labs and Dr. Sara Sadr.
- Building on a 2023 study demonstrating oxygen-tolerance modification, the approach controls timing to prevent unsafe growth in the bloodstream, reflecting Waterloo's interdisciplinary health-innovation effort.
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20 Articles
Study highlights that the key is to overcome oxygen limitation to understand the tumor environment, in a genetic engineering solution
Tumor-killing bacteria could be the new breakthrough. Genetically modified microbes enter the core of a tumor and consume it from the inside.
·Budapest, Hungary
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Coverage Details
Total News Sources20
Leaning Left3Leaning Right1Center7Last UpdatedBias Distribution64% Center
Bias Distribution
- 64% of the sources are Center
64% Center
L 27%
C 64%
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