A cancer treatment uses bacteria to eradicate tumors in mice and dogs

However, the news that shows the number on line issue of Nature Biotechnology is exhilarating. Scientists have tested a new form of treatment for solid tumors, involving the launch of bacteria on them. These bacteria have been genetically engineered like tiny bombs or minicélulas, and are designed to attack the more aggressive tumors that have become resistant to anticancer drugs.

The attack is twofold. On the one hand, minicelulas, which have a size of 400 nanometers-that is, four hundred billionths of a meter-are anchored in resistant tumor cells, thanks to a curious fact is that in eighty percent of cases, these malignant cells express a growth factor of the skin (known in English as Epidermal Growth Factor).
Minicélulas manipulated

The minicélulas are coated with an antibody that recognizes this protein. When they stick to the cell, the swallows to destroy tumor. What happens is that inside, the bacteria carry a message written in the form of ribonucleic acid. This message is conveyed in the construction of a protein in the tumor cell that is capable of blocking the molecular pumps that have developed tumors to take the drugs out-which ultimately makes them immune. In plainer words, it involves placing a blunt spanner in these pumps.

In a second attack, carried minicélulas drugs that destroy cancer cells. In the absence of these mechanisms to become resistant, can not spit out the drug-destruction is more efficient. The experiment was done with mice.
The tumors were eradicated
The guinea pigs were implanted with human uterine tumor aggressive and resistant to many types of drugs. After seventy days of treatment, all animals were free of tumor.
Jennifer MacDiarmid and his team at the company EnGeneIC indicated to The New York Times had also tried against twenty dogs in a yet-unpublished study and the results were "spectacular", as all had responded, and some of them were in remission.

The next step, after trying the method in primates to determine its toxicity, is to check if the method works in human patients with solid tumors, and there are plans for tests to three groups of patients in Australian hospitals. The methodology has drawn attention to the experts, but the message of cautious. "Unfortunately, our records indicate that less than one percent of the approved treatments that are promising when tested in patients," said Bert Vogelstein, John Hopkins University, the New York daily said.

A technique already used
The use of bacteria against tumors is not an entirely new concept. There was already talk about it in the nineteenth century, the observation that patients who suffered infections occasionally go into remission, precisely because the bacteria infect cells.
"This treatment combines the use of nanoparticles is a promising example of how engineering can be a strategy against tumors that are resistant to drugs in the clinic," written by hand experts Emmanouil D. Karagiannis and Daniel G. Anderson, David Koch Institute, integrated within the prestigious Masachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).