They used mice, because they are good for early tries. The researchers had 9 bacterias and only 1 was successful. Experiments in mice are cheaper and have less ethical problems than experiments in humans. (Hey! They even injected the cancer cells in mice and waited a week until it grow. Nobody will approve something like that in humans.)
The title claims that the tumos were eradicated. The title hides that it was a small tumor they injected in the mice and more importantly that it disappeared for two weeks until the experiment ended. It's difficult to guess if it will be useful for humans with bigger tumors because they are harder to detect, and it would work for a interesting enough period like 5 years.
> Several things trigger my bullshit meter. Quote:
>> "This dramatically surpasses the therapeutic efficacy of current standard treatments, including immune checkpoint inhibitors (anti-PD-L1 antibody) and liposomal doxorubicin (chemotherapy agents)"
> PD-L1 monoclonal antibodies are only effective against cancers that are PD-L1 positive. [...] Many tumor types are not PD-l1 positive.
Hmm, mice get much impressive medical results to be linked to here and there, but overall it’s not certain the species benefit that much in happiness and fulfilment.
Go forth, repent and flagellate yourself while we work at improving the future. Also, don't believe everything Greta & her ilk say. You may have noticed that she jumped off the climate train to hop on the gaza-boat? Perpetually unhappy people looking for a cause to keep their minds off their unbearable lack of a sense of purpose are not the ones you should seek out for counsel.
In other words, why react in such a dour way to an interesting discovery?
We get what we deserve. We let the top 1% destroy our planet and also let them live the longest in their bunkers, while we deal with the repercussions of not having done enough.
But I've noticed that folks on HN are very very fond of capitalism, so it's no point arguing against it on here and on the effects of wealth accumulation and greed.
The distribution here is bimodal. There are plenty of Elon-shilling exploit the solar system types, but also plenty of skeptical types who see all the futurism bullshit as a lever to maintain control.
Most humans would prefer hiding in a bunker to burning.
And far better to be hiding, than watching and playing a fiddle from atop some convenient high wall. Or plotting how to destroy your fellow alpha arsonists next.
Resource exploitation and destruction of ecosystems are direct results of capitalism and greed and neglect. I stopped bringing up arguments against capitalism on here generally due to the sheer amount of people in privileged circumstances that wouldn't change a thing about their ways. Also doesn't help that people in tech often times have no sense of empathy whatsoever, so its no use to argue about this on here.
I wonder if animals have always seen frogs as unpleasant medicine they need to eat occasionally. My dog would happily scarf them down if I let him. Or does it have to be IV administered?
Also who thinks -- "hmm we've found a new random bacteria --- let's give a bunch of tumors to mice and then IV inject this random thing into them!"?
There must have been something about the microbe that gave them a hint. Maybe it's in the cited original article and was left out of the blog post.
Humans can go very far in exploring all kind of variation in whatever craze they get addicted to, all the more if they get all the room and resources to do so.
The AI- generated diagram is plausible but horribly wrong the more you look at it. Thank goodness the original paper didn’t use that, it’s just this awful blog post that makes the research look like slop.
AGI is clearly right around the corner. It might not be able to make an accurate diagram of a cancer research study but it’s gonna cure cancer in no time…
~~I wouldn't be so sure about "clearly". We're still very squarely in the "fancy auto-complete" stage of "AI", the name of which I still consider more branding than reality.~~
The blog is highly suspect, but the study is real. That said it’s not a big deal.
Curing cancer in a mouse model is not at all uncommon in new therapies. Mouse models like this are vastly easier to treat than real world cancer for a bunch of reasons. Fully curing mice is the baseline for a treatment to even be considered for further evaluation. And even then very few therapies end up succeeding in humans - low single digit percent.
So yes, another possible treatment. But not at all a breakthrough.
When my mother was fighting cancer, I recall the many disappointments of finding research shrinking tumours in animal models, only to find out the human research showing it didnt work in humans. This was in the 2010s, before llms, but when google search actually searched the web. Then, once you found something that seemed to work in humans, you were hit with the realization that ‘cancer’ is an umbrella term, and you need to account for cell type, and its numerous mutations.. I think the best approach is to collect a sample of the cancer, genotype it, test it against all known anticancer compounds, similar to how you’d deal with a bacterial infection sample, and then hope that the compound that worked for that specific cancer cell will work inside the human
Before anybody gets too excited they should check out some of the other reporting on that site, such as "COVID-19 Vaccine is the Culprit in Majority Found Dead after Injection" and "Trump Signed a Directive to Accelerate 6G Deployment to Operate "Implantable Technologies"
The blog articles (6 weeks old) describes this as new, but the linked paper is closer to 6 months old. Random report of the same bacteria giving a chemo patient sepsis: https://www.cureus.com/articles/342789-sepsis-caused-by-ewin... which seems unfortunate
Yep, I found that one too - this paper <https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12710904/> assumes immunocompetent mice, while the sepsis one was in a patient who was immunocompromised (both by the cancer and by chemo).
Given that many cancer sufferers are immunocompromised, this isn't necessarily a silver bullet, although it is an interesting result.
Sure thing! Plenty of possibilities here for instance: 'Bioactive Compounds in Ficus Fruits, Their Bioactivities, and Associated Health Benefits: A Review'. (It's a pretty extensive list).
The paper states that the results are in vivo, not in vitro. The bacteria seemed to literally have cured colorectal cancer in mice. Mice are apparently strikingly similar to human beings in ways that matter, and so this research is very encouraging.
Likely too late for a particular person in my life, but hopefully not too late for others.
As in 99.9% of cases of people who rush to the comments desperate to post a link to xkcd because, erm, actually I dunno. Why the hell do half the threads on HN have someone desperately posting an unrelated xkcd?
Previus discussion (from the university press release) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46306894 (498 points | 6 months ago | 140 comments) I'll rehash my comment
They used mice, because they are good for early tries. The researchers had 9 bacterias and only 1 was successful. Experiments in mice are cheaper and have less ethical problems than experiments in humans. (Hey! They even injected the cancer cells in mice and waited a week until it grow. Nobody will approve something like that in humans.)
The title claims that the tumos were eradicated. The title hides that it was a small tumor they injected in the mice and more importantly that it disappeared for two weeks until the experiment ended. It's difficult to guess if it will be useful for humans with bigger tumors because they are harder to detect, and it would work for a interesting enough period like 5 years.
There is also and old comment by octaane https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46308732 I'll quote it partially:
> Several things trigger my bullshit meter. Quote:
>> "This dramatically surpasses the therapeutic efficacy of current standard treatments, including immune checkpoint inhibitors (anti-PD-L1 antibody) and liposomal doxorubicin (chemotherapy agents)"
> PD-L1 monoclonal antibodies are only effective against cancers that are PD-L1 positive. [...] Many tumor types are not PD-l1 positive.
> Doxy is an ancient SOC chemo.
> [...]
To give more credit to this blog post, the NIH published findings on this same subject last year.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12710904/
Mice are having a great year
To be honest, they are pretty cute, they don't deserve cancer.
The ones genetically engineered to get Alzheimer's or the ones engineered to get cancer?
Plot twist, doesn't matter, even the control group is going to be dead soon if it's not already.
Trick question, all lab rodents are so inbred that they get cancer anyway
Hmm, mice get much impressive medical results to be linked to here and there, but overall it’s not certain the species benefit that much in happiness and fulfilment.
They told me they’re happy enough when I was delivering them cookies.
The pride and sense of achievement they ought to feel that members of their kind did something should be enough to feel superior though
Century*
We are destroying ecosystems so fast that there will be no frogs and we will regret it. The same with all the nature
Go forth, repent and flagellate yourself while we work at improving the future. Also, don't believe everything Greta & her ilk say. You may have noticed that she jumped off the climate train to hop on the gaza-boat? Perpetually unhappy people looking for a cause to keep their minds off their unbearable lack of a sense of purpose are not the ones you should seek out for counsel.
In other words, why react in such a dour way to an interesting discovery?
> In other words, why react in such a dour way to an interesting discovery?
Because we're triggering mass extinction events in the name of improving things, that's why.
We get what we deserve. We let the top 1% destroy our planet and also let them live the longest in their bunkers, while we deal with the repercussions of not having done enough. But I've noticed that folks on HN are very very fond of capitalism, so it's no point arguing against it on here and on the effects of wealth accumulation and greed.
The distribution here is bimodal. There are plenty of Elon-shilling exploit the solar system types, but also plenty of skeptical types who see all the futurism bullshit as a lever to maintain control.
People here strive to be the ones hiding in the bunkers as the world burns.
Most humans would prefer hiding in a bunker to burning.
And far better to be hiding, than watching and playing a fiddle from atop some convenient high wall. Or plotting how to destroy your fellow alpha arsonists next.
people are very fond of it here -> there's no point arguing against it here?
Backwards logic. If they're fond of it then they're the people to be arguing against, no?
Resource exploitation and destruction of ecosystems are direct results of capitalism and greed and neglect. I stopped bringing up arguments against capitalism on here generally due to the sheer amount of people in privileged circumstances that wouldn't change a thing about their ways. Also doesn't help that people in tech often times have no sense of empathy whatsoever, so its no use to argue about this on here.
Socialist Russia was an environmental disaster. https://www.gchumanrights.org/preparedness/the-environmental...
Yes yes socialism also made mistakes so capitalism must be better!!
Yeah, sure, capitalism, 1%, etc. Spoken like a 15yo who just saw some DSA- agitprop on TikTok and is now ready to solve the world's problems.
Just proves my point :)
I wonder if animals have always seen frogs as unpleasant medicine they need to eat occasionally. My dog would happily scarf them down if I let him. Or does it have to be IV administered?
Also who thinks -- "hmm we've found a new random bacteria --- let's give a bunch of tumors to mice and then IV inject this random thing into them!"?
There must have been something about the microbe that gave them a hint. Maybe it's in the cited original article and was left out of the blog post.
> unpleasant
> happily
I think you answered your own question really, a lot of animals just enjoy eating them (humans included!)
Humans can go very far in exploring all kind of variation in whatever craze they get addicted to, all the more if they get all the room and resources to do so.
maybe your dog is chasing a high from some rare toad mutation...
Crank blog, very skeptical
I'm astounded that this thread doesn't contain at least one 'eat the frog' joke.
https://asana.com/resources/eat-the-frog
100 years of trying everything to kill bacteria, and we find they can be jolly useful
humanity has been producing useful things from bacteria for thousands of things already.
Cheese!
lager
Yeast are not bacteria, though
Most beer until quite recently was sour from bacteria.
Bryan Johnson might be interested in IV’ing frog gut bacteria.
Is Bryan Johnson a mouse with cancer?
Not yet.
How rude! Bryan is no labrat /j
So the Bursar at Unseen University was on to something this whole time? And we all thought was mad!
Mice are so goddam healthy.
They get all the good medical breakthroughs.
The AI- generated diagram is plausible but horribly wrong the more you look at it. Thank goodness the original paper didn’t use that, it’s just this awful blog post that makes the research look like slop.
AGI is clearly right around the corner. It might not be able to make an accurate diagram of a cancer research study but it’s gonna cure cancer in no time…
~~I wouldn't be so sure about "clearly". We're still very squarely in the "fancy auto-complete" stage of "AI", the name of which I still consider more branding than reality.~~
Edit: Ignore me, I'm sleepy and can't read, lol
The person you’re replying to was being glib
Lol! Yep, that's my bad. Too sleepy right now.
How in the world did you miss such obvious sarcasm?
Whoops, lack of sleep, haha.
The blog is highly suspect, but the study is real. That said it’s not a big deal.
Curing cancer in a mouse model is not at all uncommon in new therapies. Mouse models like this are vastly easier to treat than real world cancer for a bunch of reasons. Fully curing mice is the baseline for a treatment to even be considered for further evaluation. And even then very few therapies end up succeeding in humans - low single digit percent.
So yes, another possible treatment. But not at all a breakthrough.
When my mother was fighting cancer, I recall the many disappointments of finding research shrinking tumours in animal models, only to find out the human research showing it didnt work in humans. This was in the 2010s, before llms, but when google search actually searched the web. Then, once you found something that seemed to work in humans, you were hit with the realization that ‘cancer’ is an umbrella term, and you need to account for cell type, and its numerous mutations.. I think the best approach is to collect a sample of the cancer, genotype it, test it against all known anticancer compounds, similar to how you’d deal with a bacterial infection sample, and then hope that the compound that worked for that specific cancer cell will work inside the human
Before anybody gets too excited they should check out some of the other reporting on that site, such as "COVID-19 Vaccine is the Culprit in Majority Found Dead after Injection" and "Trump Signed a Directive to Accelerate 6G Deployment to Operate "Implantable Technologies"
The blog articles (6 weeks old) describes this as new, but the linked paper is closer to 6 months old. Random report of the same bacteria giving a chemo patient sepsis: https://www.cureus.com/articles/342789-sepsis-caused-by-ewin... which seems unfortunate
Yep, I found that one too - this paper <https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12710904/> assumes immunocompetent mice, while the sepsis one was in a patient who was immunocompromised (both by the cancer and by chemo).
Given that many cancer sufferers are immunocompromised, this isn't necessarily a silver bullet, although it is an interesting result.
Sorry but the site looks too sensationalist for me.
Is there any other source?
Wow, this is humorous .. whats next, the eye of the newt cures wistfulness? I sure hope so.
Seriously though, we are living in an era where the more the science broadens its horizons, the more it just looks like plain ol' witchcraft.
I'm hoping there'll be some uses for figs we haven't thought of, next ..
You might like this episode of Radiolab:
https://radiolab.org/podcast/best-medicine
They followed a 1100 year old medicine recipe and found the resulting salve was effective against MRSA in their test.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6261618/
Sure thing! Plenty of possibilities here for instance: 'Bioactive Compounds in Ficus Fruits, Their Bioactivities, and Associated Health Benefits: A Review'. (It's a pretty extensive list).
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/06ab/f83d30ec00bb902bb1aa37...
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1217/
The paper states that the results are in vivo, not in vitro. The bacteria seemed to literally have cured colorectal cancer in mice. Mice are apparently strikingly similar to human beings in ways that matter, and so this research is very encouraging.
Likely too late for a particular person in my life, but hopefully not too late for others.
this one is in mice. I guess we're running in circles now.
Not really the same in this situation though.
As in 99.9% of cases of people who rush to the comments desperate to post a link to xkcd because, erm, actually I dunno. Why the hell do half the threads on HN have someone desperately posting an unrelated xkcd?
It's our Nostradamus Prophecies, just like having an old Star Trek episode for everything that is happening today.
Mice tumors, the scourge of humanity.
lol