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.
I think you overestimate the "interesting enough period". How much would it be worth for some patients to go into remission for a year? or even 6 months? The answer is a lot
In it, Connery finds what looks to be a rare natural cure to all cancer in the Rain Forest (spoiler: not a frog, but equally as weird), and is literally battling the nearby deforesting and bulldozers. For a Sean Connery movie it was bizarre (As a young teen, I saw it in the theaters.. quite a bit less action than a 007 movie but good drama and dramatic Sean Connery acting).
Yeah, with a movie like that in his credits, it seems a miracle he was ever selected to be James Bond. His radar for picking great movies was equally bad as it was good.
Very cool research. They just injected mice with 45 different bacterial strains, and then isolated and cultivated the ones that had the best performance. It seems that it might be quite easy to cultivate strains to different tumors / specific tumor samples.
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.
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.
The alternatives to capitalism are a wide spectrum, ranging from totalitarian dictatorship (aka central planning) all the way to free markets with sensible regulations. What they all have in common is not being capitalism, i.e. not putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest.
Unregulated capitalism does not exist anywhere on this planet, and the US is in fact quite a bureaucratic country, though less so than many others.
"putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest."
Do you think it is? Then let some of the wealthiest try to obtain a permit in downtown SF for a mere block of flats, the likes of which used to be built by the thousands 100 years ago. If it takes less than a decade, I would be surprised.
There is a lot of power outside the private sector.
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.
The so-called socialist economies were just the extreme form of monopolistic capitalism.
As a child, I experienced the reality of "socialism", where every word used by the ruling elites meant something very different from what it was claimed to mean.
Unfortunately, already for more than a quarter of century USA and most "capitalistic" countries every year become more and more alike to the former socialist countries, from all points of view, like great wealth inequality, markets dominated by quasi-monopolies, non-existent political opposition, mass surveillance of the population, confusing propaganda in all mass-media, less and less chances to afford to truly be the owner of many kinds of things, like houses, cars or computers. If your car or your computer or your smartphone or your TV set do whatever their vendor or the government want, instead of doing what you want, then obviously you are not their owner.
so if it's socialism/communism destroying the environment it's a mistake. but if it's capitalism it's by design?
nothing other than the prosperity that capitalism generates is inherently bad for the environment. yeah if you pull people out of poverty their carbon footprint will probably increase. but the alternative is them living in poverty and starving under a communist system (like always)
the amount of goods and services capitalism has generated has saved so many lives. we have huge amounts of excess food we send across the world.
Those things have also happened under other forms of economic structure, such as feudalism and communism. In fact there's no point in human history when we weren't manipulating the environment for our gain, destroying some species and promoting others in the process, we just got better at it over time. It's sort of an inevitability given we are megafauna who take a lot of resources per human to live, and there are an awful lot of us.
Rather than blaming "capitalism" as a whole, I would more put the blame on our ability to ignore negative externalities when pricing things in. That occurs just as much in any other economic system.
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?
Certainly lots could be said here, but first and foremost its more than a little weird to be so fixated on that Greta girl like this.. You should really, like, work on making your point without bringing her up maybe? Maybe try writing two sentences not talking about her and go from there? I am not sure you appreciate how much it takes away from you point... Like, oh no, are you going to say something bad about Al Gore next? I will be devestated...
While we are at it: whats with the antiquated parlance? Are we playing DnD right now?
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 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
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.~~
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?
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.
> [...]
More like, what's a mouse gonna do about it?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104839/?ref_=fn_t_1
In it, Connery finds what looks to be a rare natural cure to all cancer in the Rain Forest (spoiler: not a frog, but equally as weird), and is literally battling the nearby deforesting and bulldozers. For a Sean Connery movie it was bizarre (As a young teen, I saw it in the theaters.. quite a bit less action than a 007 movie but good drama and dramatic Sean Connery acting).
Buddy, if you're trying to tell me it's weirder than Darby O'Gill and the Little People, I am going to need more than Sir Connery in a ponytail.
Check out Zardoz: Connery with a ponytail, a pistol in hand, wearing thigh-high boots and a mankini.
And a giant flying stone head that vomits guns.
I am not joking.
Full article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2025.2...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12710904/
One theory of where posts like this come from: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2527316123
"putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest."
Do you think it is? Then let some of the wealthiest try to obtain a permit in downtown SF for a mere block of flats, the likes of which used to be built by the thousands 100 years ago. If it takes less than a decade, I would be surprised.
There is a lot of power outside the private sector.
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.
Backwards logic. If they're fond of it then they're the people to be arguing against, no?
As a child, I experienced the reality of "socialism", where every word used by the ruling elites meant something very different from what it was claimed to mean.
Unfortunately, already for more than a quarter of century USA and most "capitalistic" countries every year become more and more alike to the former socialist countries, from all points of view, like great wealth inequality, markets dominated by quasi-monopolies, non-existent political opposition, mass surveillance of the population, confusing propaganda in all mass-media, less and less chances to afford to truly be the owner of many kinds of things, like houses, cars or computers. If your car or your computer or your smartphone or your TV set do whatever their vendor or the government want, instead of doing what you want, then obviously you are not their owner.
yeah well that's because the execution matters and turns out when you give people power to choose who gets what, they abuse it. go figure.
nothing other than the prosperity that capitalism generates is inherently bad for the environment. yeah if you pull people out of poverty their carbon footprint will probably increase. but the alternative is them living in poverty and starving under a communist system (like always)
the amount of goods and services capitalism has generated has saved so many lives. we have huge amounts of excess food we send across the world.
Rather than blaming "capitalism" as a whole, I would more put the blame on our ability to ignore negative externalities when pricing things in. That occurs just as much in any other economic system.
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.
While we are at it: whats with the antiquated parlance? Are we playing DnD right now?
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.
> happily
I think you answered your own question really, a lot of animals just enjoy eating them (humans included!)
https://asana.com/resources/eat-the-frog
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.
Edit: Ignore me, I'm sleepy and can't read, lol
They get all the good medical breakthroughs.
Vs. there's a whole lotta of money to be made in mouse medicine.
Symbolic, perhaps?
Given that many cancer sufferers are immunocompromised, this isn't necessarily a silver bullet, although it is an interesting result.
Is there any other source?
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 ..
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/
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/06ab/f83d30ec00bb902bb1aa37...
Likely too late for a particular person in my life, but hopefully not too late for others.