Receive our unique vitiligo formula, completely FREE of charge!

Longevity

Longevity Briefs: A Strange But Promising Way To Treat Cancer

Posted on 22 October 2024

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Longevity briefs provides a short summary of novel research in biology, medicine, or biotechnology that caught the attention of our researchers in Oxford, due to its potential to improve our health, wellbeing, and longevity.

The problem:

While most people associate vaccines with prevention of infectious diseases, you can theoretically vaccinate against other diseases as well, so long as whatever causes the disease can be recognised and specifically targeted by the immune system. While cancer cells may belong to the patient’s body and contain the patient’s DNA, they quickly develop many mutations that cause them to express their own distinct antigens, allowing them to be recognised and targeted by immune cells. By identifying the key antigens of a specific individual’s cancer, then vaccinating against those antigens, we could potentially boost this immune response. In this study, researchers showcase an unusual but seemingly effective way to do this in mice, by deliberately infecting tumours with bacteria.

The discovery:

Researchers first genetically engineered seven strains of E. coli bacteria to express a total of 19 antigens characteristic of colorectal cancer. They then injected mice with colorectal cancer cells so that tumours would form on their flanks. After advanced tumours had formed, the researchers injected the engineered E. coli bacteria directly into the tumours. As a control, some mice were injected with E.coli that did not express tumour antigens or that expressed only a single antigen.

They found that the E.coli colonised the tumours but not the surrounding tissue. Furthermore, in the mice that received the cancer antigen-bearing bacteria, tumour growth was greatly slowed and the tumours were completely eliminated in 3 out of 7 mice. Remarkably, all of the mice in the treatment group were still alive after 50 days, while every mouse in the control groups had died by day 30 or so. 

Left: Tumour volume post-treatment for mice given strains bearing 19 antigens (nAg19, blue), a single antigen (NC LLO+, black) or control strain (NC, empty).
Right: Mouse survival post cancer engraftment.
Probiotic neoantigen delivery vectors for precision cancer immunotherapy

The researchers then performed a similar experiment, but this time in mice bearing two tumours. They only injected the bacteria into one of the tumours, but found that this was enough to get the immune system to target both tumours, even though the bacteria did not spread to the second one. More experiments showed that the treatment appeared to be effective against multiple tumour types, even metastatic melanoma (skin cancer that has spread to other parts of the body) and even when the bacteria were injected into the blood, rather than directly into the tumour. The bacteria colonised the tumours but were eliminated from other tissues.

The implications:

Some of the most common vaccine techniques involve obtaining the pathogen you want to vaccinate against, then killing or modifying it so that it is unable to cause disease. The resulting pathogen will still carry the antigens that will kick the immune system into gear, without posing any real threat to the recipient. What’s special about this cancer vaccine is that the bacteria actually infect the tumour and spread within it, enhancing the immune response seemingly without harming other tissues. How? Tumours are quite favourable places for some bacteria to live, as they are usually hypoxic (low oxygen) and nutrient-rich environments.

Applying this treatment to human patients will not be so easy, as unlike the cancers that were injected into the mice, naturally occurring cancers are all different due to the random nature of mutations. Each patient’s cancer cells would need to be sequenced and a bacterial strain would need to be created specifically for them. However, the authors of this paper think that this could be done quite quickly, and would not present a major obstacle to treatment.


Never Miss a Breakthrough!

Sign up for our newletter and get the latest breakthroughs direct to your inbox.

    References

    Title image by National Cancer Institute, Upslash

    Probiotic neoantigen delivery vectors for precision cancer immunotherapy https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08033-4

    Featured in This Post
    Topics

    Never Miss a Breakthrough!

    Sign up for our newletter and get the latest breakthroughs direct to your inbox.

      Copyright © Gowing Life Limited, 2025 • All rights reserved • Registered in England & Wales No. 11774353 • Registered office: Ivy Business Centre, Crown Street, Manchester, M35 9BG.