Is the cure for cancer… SALMONELLA?!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Did you know that Salmonella is very… SNEAKY?!
Our immune systems are fantastic at protecting our body from bacteria. But ol’ Ella Salmon… ho ho… if there’s a tumor to hide in, she’ll do just that. If someone were more enterprising, they’d find a way to use Salmonella to treat cancer. Wait! Has someone already done that?!
Vishnu Raman from the University of Massachusetts engineered a safe strain of Salmonella that doesn’t make you sick.
This safe Salmonella delivers an anti cancer drug directly to cancer cells, attacking them from the inside-out! In mice, it shrank tumor sizes by fifty-seven percent compared with current chemotherapy treatment!
Who knew Salmonella was an Uber X for smuggling drugs?
Reference: Raman, V., Van Dessel, N., Hall, C.L. et al. Intracellular delivery of protein drugs with an autonomously lysing bacterial system reduces tumor growth and metastases. Nat Commun 12, 6116 (2021).