Scientists are discovering a powerful new way to prevent cancer

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/09/02/scientists-are-discovering-a-powerful-new-way-to-prevent-cancer

by Earw0rm • 10 months ago

169 125 10 months ago

economist.com

Earw0rm8• 10 months ago

Interesting article challenging today's popular understanding of cancer genesis and development, and outlining the increasing understanding of the role inflammation plays in stimulating the growth of cancer cell populations.

3abiton• 10 months ago

From my understanding it's still highly speculative though.

Earw0rm8• 10 months ago

Ask a dairy farmer. Inflammation-mediated carcinogenesis is certainly a thing for some specific types. How much it's true across the board is speculative, but a lot of inflammation-related conditions also have association with higher cancer risk for the given body part.

victorbjorklund• 10 months ago

https://archive.is/2025.09.11-083906/https://www.economist.c...

adaptbrian2• 10 months ago

Warburg effect (oncology) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_effect_(oncology)

CaptainOfCoit• 10 months ago

"powerful new way" and "Around the 1920s, Otto Heinrich Warburg and his group concluded...", are you sure they're talking about that? Doesn't seem very new.

crazygringo2• 10 months ago

Why are you posting that? When it has zero connection to the article and you're giving zero explanation?

adaptbrian2• 10 months ago

See lambdabas comment right below this. This fella that I linked was the OG on this. Consider this further reading and potentially insightful in parallel to this article.

lambdaba• 10 months ago

The discovery that chronic inflammation can provide the impetus for cancers to develop is forcing clinicians to rethink their approach to the disease’s prevention.

Alternative health has been saying this for decades. Ketogenic diets + medicinal plants/mushrooms can do a lot, even after the fact.

lomase• 10 months ago

Scientific health has also been saying it for decades.

danielbln• 10 months ago

Alternative health says a lot of things, many things unsubstantiated. The difficult part is figuring out what's true and what's quackery.

dsr_2• 10 months ago

[flagged]

dapperdrake• 10 months ago

Correlation is symmetric (by "accident") while cause and affect are asymmetric on purpose.

morsch• 10 months ago

It's not hard to say all kinds things if you don't do it with scientific rigor. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to know which of the things are true.

amelius• 10 months ago

That's exactly what influencers on TikTok also tell me. These kinds of statement really need proof, otherwise they say very little.

Der_Einzige• 10 months ago

Intermittent fasting and keto are not alternative health. The science for both of these is excellent especially for reducing diabetes.

themk• 10 months ago

As far as I understand, Keto helps manage the symptoms of diabetes, but will not prevent it, and (without a source on hand), might actually increase your chances of developing it relative to a healthy diet that includes (mostly unrefined) carbs.

Spooky23• 10 months ago

Inflammation is typically an immune response. Chronic inflammation is a standard flag that is measured a used by doctors in diagnoses for many years, and by oncologists in particular when treating cancer.

There’s a lot of work right now into immunology and cancer, and they are discovering specific correlations as that progresses. This has nothing to do with mushroom tea, although that probably helps with acute inflammatory issues.

inglor_cz3• 10 months ago

I will again mention my favorite cancer champions, the bats.

Bats very rarely get cancer (I tried to find the actual # of verified cases of cancers in bats, but came up short), and they have a lot of anti-cancer adaptations in their genome.

They are also really good at taming inflammation and activity of various viruses. That helps them survive infection with rabies - their systems just don't react as aggresively to the infection as ours (and most mammals') do.

This may help them against cancer as well. Not just p53 et al.

mattmaroon• 10 months ago

So you’re saying if we just switch our diet to mosquitos we’ll all be fine?

dsr_2• 10 months ago

No, but in 100-300 generations your descendants will be.

midnitewarrior• 10 months ago

It's a common misconception that bats eat mosquitoes.

It comes from a study where bats were trapped in a chamber filled with mosquitoes to see how many they could eat.

A comparable experiment would be putting a human in a cage filled with bread crumbs to see how many the human eats.

In our natural habitat, we eat slices of bread and other food. We don't waste the time and energy of consuming bread crumbs unless given no alternative.

Yes, bats can eat mosquitoes, but why bother when there are much larger, nutritious insects to catch with the same effort?

Earw0rm8• 10 months ago

I wonder what the evolutionary engineering trade-off is there.

Put it another way, it seems our systems are balanced to regulate cancer during our youth and reproductive years to a low but non-zero level.

Why hasn't evolution turned the dial up another couple of notches? Could be simple metabolic cost, or could be something else.

inglor_cz3• 10 months ago

Not everything is necessarily a trade-off. Perhaps the bats just randomly hit a sweet spot that most of other species missed.

As you say, things that happen later in the organism's life usually don't result in strong evolutionary effects.

coldtea5• 10 months ago

Why hasn't evolution turned the dial up another couple of notches?

Because evolution doesn't care about us beyond reproduction age (after which is when most cancers occur, especially considering that historically that age was between say 16 and 35).

Or even better phrased, because evolution doesn't care or plan at all, it's a blind mechanism.

If a local minimum is ok, we'll stay there for as long as some environmental or other evolutionary pressure gets to move us further.

Cancer wasn't a big issue for most of our existance as species, especially with lower life expectancies, more active lifestyles, zero obesity, zero pollutants, etc.

In evolutionary terms, modern lifestyles are not even a blip, especially post-industrial ones which don't even register.

laszlojamf• 10 months ago

Could be a cliff fitness function. Heard about this relativ typ schizophrenia here on HN a while back. The idea is that some phenotypes promote survival of the species overall, but due to random mutations are sometimes detrimental to individual members of that species

FollowingTheDao4• 10 months ago

it seems our systems are balanced to regulate cancer during our youth and reproductive years

Yes, the most important question, and an easy answer if you know where to look. What is it that we lose when we age?

Mineral and vitamin deficiencies can accelerate the mitochondrial decay of aging

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16102804/

Age-associated B vitamin deficiency as a determinant of chronic diseases

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nutrition-research-r...

Emerging Roles of Vitamin B12 in Aging and Inflammation

https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/25/9/5044

There is more if you want to look. Lots more.

gus_massa• 10 months ago

From a fast search in Google, life expectancy in bats is 5-15 years. A long life of 70-80 years gives more time to accumulate mutations and get a cancer.

Also, probably only bats in zoos get a cancer diagnosis. Most ills bats just die in the wild and are eaten by other animals.

inglor_cz3• 10 months ago

Many species of bats live longer than that. Like 40. When compared to other mammals, bats live very long lives relative to their tiny size.

Also, short-lived animals get cancer all of the time. Mice, dogs, cats.

The idea of cancer being caused by passive accumulation of mutations over time looks appealing, but does not seem to correspond to actual frequency of cancer mapped by body size (because more cells = more chances of some cell going haywire), nor to maximum age.

Anti-cancer capabilities of a given organism seem to be more important. There are gene variants that are protective against cancer, and the capability of the immune system to kill suspicious cells matters too. (Note that almost all new efficient oncological treatments in the last decade or so involve the immune system of the patient.)

tdeck• 10 months ago

Perhaps RFK and Mr. Oz will be telling us all to sleep hanging upside down by next year.

westurner• 10 months ago

Though eating them will not solve cancer,

And, I've been chatting with 2.5pro about this, so:

/? which animals don't get cancer? https://www.google.com/search?q=Bats%2C+mole+rats%2C+horses%...

Bats (extra copies of the p53 gene, immune system, survival adaptations to atmospheric radiation exposure, high telomerase activity), Elephants (extra copies of p53), Mole rats (High molecular mass hyaluronan (HMM-HA) regulating sugar, contact inhibition), Blind mole rats (HMM-HA, protein that causes (apoptotic?) cell death)), Horses, Cows (BLV resistance, general resistance), Bowhead whales (prevention by DNA repair, CIRBP and RPA2, live to 200), Squirrels (hypersensitive cell monitoring, high telomerase activity,), and Tasmanian devils (DFTD resistance adaptation) are all cancer resistant?

If there are natural food sources that treat or inhibit cancer, and humans unwittingly were eating such foods until modern times, could it be that humans have prevented adaptation by supplementation (a support that has collapsed as modern diets have changed)?

[... list of anti-inflammatory diet foods]

How exposed to CPMV Cowpea Mosaic Virus are humans dietarily in modern and in ancient times? CPMV causes a IFN response?

(CPMV is highly prevalent in cowpeas and black-eyed peas (which are "good luck"))

Antibody evidence: Studies have tested patient sera for antibodies against CPMV and found that over 50% of tested samples were positive, indicating past exposure. [...] The consistent, low-level dietary exposure to CPMV over human history, and its ability to trigger an IFN response without causing infection, could have provided a form of regular, passive immune stimulation. [...]
Despite being a plant virus, CPMV is recognized by the mammalian immune system as a "danger signal." This recognition happens through special receptors on immune cells called Toll-like receptors (TLRs), specifically TLR2, TLR4, and TLR7.
CPMV and IFN-gamma: Studies have shown that exposing human immune cells (peripheral blood mononuclear cells or PBMCs) to CPMV induces the secretion of IFN-gamma, a potent anti-tumor cytokine.
Encapsulated RNA: The CPMV virus nanoparticle contains encapsulated RNA, which is one of the triggers for the immune response. The RNA activates TLR7/8, which leads to the production of Type I interferons (IFN-α and IFN-β), further boosting the immune system's anti-cancer response.

There are (differently encapsulated) RNA cancer vaccines in development.

CPMV is basically already a general purpose bioengineering platform with significant review IIUC?

How dietarily exposed to EPS3.9 polysaccharide are humans and cancer-resistant animals? Is there a one-two CPMV + EPS3.9 cancer treatment opportunity?

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44988761 :

Can EPS3.9 cause pyroptosis cause IFN cause epitope spreading for cancer treatment?

/? Spongiibacter nanhainus CSC3.9 : https://www.google.com/search?q=Spongiibacter+nanhainus+CSC3... :

Spongiibacter nanhainus CSC3.9 is a novel deep-sea bacterium isolated from a [deep ocean] cold seep [with blue light] that produces both a volatile organic compound (VOC) called VOC-3.9 with broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity and a sugar-based compound, exopolysaccharide (EPS3.9), which targets cancer cells by inducing programmed cell death

Could CRISPR or similar produce an alternate bacterium that's easier to brew which also produces EPS3.9 without the cold temperature and high pressure? Are there potentially other natural sources of EPS3.9 besides CSC3.9?

Endocannabinoids and the ECS Endocannabinoid System modulate and regulate immune and inflammatory responses (in non- and pre- insect invertebrates and in all vertebrates). Omega PUFAs are endocannabinoid precursors. There are also (fat-soluble) Omega polyunsaturated fatty acids in algae and in fish.

A bit of research on cancer again today: https://share.google/aimode/Qpar9RPUNy65IDt8n

Would there be advantages to CPMV + EPS3.9 + CPMVprime + mRNA for cancer therapy? https://g.co/gemini/share/9c6526d1991f

pengaru• 10 months ago

This is also why bats are viral reservoirs and likely sources for mammalian pandemics - their immune system simply doesn't clear infections.

My understanding is it's because they're constantly damaging their own dna from high operating temps (flying mammals). So the immune system must tolerate foreign looking dna at all times, constantly repairing cell damage instead of aggressively attacking foreigners.

siva7• 10 months ago

This, says Dr Balmain, suggests that 80-90% of carcinogens which people are exposed to may not induce mutations.

Tell me the 10% of which are dangerous so that i can avoid them

azan_• 10 months ago

All are dangerous, not all through mutagenesis though.

jnord• 10 months ago

https://archive.md/vOR6x

submeta• 10 months ago

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the negative effects of inflammation. Recently, I came across an article arguing that it’s inflammation in the blood vessels (not cholesterol itself) that causes cardiovascular problems.

Now this article blaming inflammation for cancer.

But isn’t inflammation also a useful and necessary process in the body? If it’s so harmful, should we all be taking anti-inflammatory drugs? Of course, those have their own downsides too (my doctor mentioned that ibuprofen can even affect hearing).

7thaccount• 10 months ago

I think some inflammation is natural and a response to infection, but when your entire diet and lifestyle lead to daily inflammation, I'm guessing it's really bad.

wizzwizz4• 10 months ago

If inflammation weren't a trade-off, we'd have perpetual inflammation. That kind of thing is rapidly tweaked by evolution.

baby3• 10 months ago

I remember reading this article on why muslim countries had low rate of cancers. Apparently it was the yearly month-long fast + all the spices that people ate daily (anti inflammatory)

neuronic• 10 months ago

Probably a "the dose makes the poison" kind of thing? Constant inflammation and exposure to inflammatory agents could eventually raise the likelihood of cell damage in affected tissues, no?

The immune system is highly highly complicated and directed by huge networks of genes and molecules all up- and downregulating each other depending on internal and external factors. If things go "off balance" in this system the consequences could be dire.

You dont want firefighters hosing down your house from the inside when there is no fire anymore either.

Workaccount22• 10 months ago

Ever since I had covid 5 years ago, my body has been stuck under a constant firehouse shower. High heart rate, shortness of breath, and a constant pressure in my upper chest.

I know it's immune related, because when I am coming down with a cold the symptoms all vanish. Like the firehose has an actual fire to fight.

throwingrocks• 10 months ago

The article touches on this by framing chronic inflammation (e.g. exposure to air pollution over years) as the problem.

antasvara• 10 months ago

Inflammation is a blunt instrument. It's one of the body's tools to contain and attack a pathogen. Without it, many bacteria and other irritants would wreak havoc on the body.

As allergies and (to an extent) COVID have shown, inflammation can also be dangerous. Too much acute inflammation can cause essential body functions to shut down or function incorrectly.

Point being that inflammation is "good" when the alternative is an infection running rampant in your body. But it's "worse" for your body than the baseline, so chronic inflammation is bad for you (and seems to increase cancer risk).

Anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen are good for knocking down inflammation, but they have a suite of side effects unrelated to this function that make them terrible for prolonged use. I don't know for sure, but I'd bet that these side effects are way worse than the benefits of reduced chronic inflammation.

More generally, reducing inflammation across the board leaves you open to infection. It's why we don't prescribe steroids long-term in most patients: the downside of reduced immune response vastly outweighs the benefit for generally healthy patients. It's only considered if the condition (like your body attacking an organ transplant) is more dangerous than the reduced immune response.

mewpmewp22• 10 months ago

As far as I understand exercise and working out also causes inflammation in order to repair and/or build your muscle. So taking ibuprofen might hurt your ability to recover etc.

Immune system and inflammation is clearly very important process for humans for many things even beyond illnesses.

Like inflammation is body's way to repair and adapt to the environment.

breadwinner2• 10 months ago

Would it be accurate to say enteric coated baby aspirin reduces risk of stroke due to its blood thinning properties, but since it is anti-inflammatory, also reduces risk of atherosclerosis and now cancer?

mewpmewp22• 10 months ago

Also doesn't working out cause inflammation and when you take ibuprofen you hurt your ability to build/repair muscle and recover because of reduced inflammation?

derektank• 10 months ago

Exercising also results in the body producing more anti-inflammatory myokines

FollowingTheDao4• 10 months ago

There is a big difference between acute inflammation and chronic inflammation.

Infection causes acute inflammation. Air pollution causes chronic inflammation.

Infection can also cause chronic or out of control inflammation which can aslo kill you via a cytokine storm.

stult• 10 months ago

Our inflammation responses evolved in part to help us fight off pathogens, but people in modern society are exposed to far, far fewer pathogens than even our immediate ancestors were as recently as 70 years ago when diseases like polio and mumps were still common. As a result many people have an overactive inflammation response relative to the pathogen load to which they are regularly exposed.

In extreme cases, that can manifest as autoimmune disease, when overly strong inflammation or other immune responses end up attacking not just foreign pathogens but the person's body itself. As another poster said, inflammation is a blunt instrument. It's a knob that can only be turned up or down, across the entire body. If you turn it down too far, you risk infectious illness. And if you turn it up too far, you risk damage to your organs.

Interestingly, there was a substantial increase in the incidence of autoimmune diseases in Europe in the generations following the Black Death, probably because people with excessively strong immune responses were more likely to survive exposure to plague bacteria. Celiacs or MS will kill someone much, much more slowly than bubonic plague will, so a disproportionate number of people with those or similar autoimmune disorders were able to survive to pass on their genes.

jszymborski3• 10 months ago

As a person who studied cancer, I am probably not this article's audience.

That said, I feel the need to point out that chronic inflammation has long been known to be one of the roots of cancer. Chronic inflammation can be caused by a few things but common among them is the immune system.

The framing of the article, in my quick skim, felt like it was insinuating that researchers believed that cancer arises from mutations alone, and that everyone assumed carcinogens were all mutagens.

I haven't read the paper this article is describing. It seems very interesting. But the headline and the article makes it seem like some major turning point or ground shift which IMHO it is not.

mielioort• 10 months ago

So auto-immune diseases ( like arthritis and allergied) and chronic untreated diseases like lyme are the main suspects now?

luciferin• 10 months ago

I don't know about main suspect, but autoimmune disease has been known for a long time to increase your risk of cancer. I have Celiac disease, so an increased risk of stomache, intestinal and bowel cancer.

Honestly, this article is kind of worrying for me, personally. I have many symptoms after two years of treatment with diet alone. Further evidence may eventually show treatment with antibiotics or steroids for people like me may lower more risks then it raises.

baby3• 10 months ago

As someone with both that sucks

laughing_man• 10 months ago

Cancer has many different, simultaneous causes. That's why when people say "x causes cancer" what they mean is x (whatever it is) raises your odds of getting cancer by a measurable degree.

baxtr2• 10 months ago

I don’t want to defend how they report. But for someone who hasn’t been involved in the field, something that’s widely accepted and well-known for a long time can seem “very new” to them.

JohnHaugeland• 10 months ago

that sentence starts “in the popular imagination”

manmal4• 10 months ago

And are we sure inflammation is the root cause and not just a bystander? Couldn’t it be pathogens that are kept in check by inflammation, which then also cause cancer to develop? HPV and papillomas, and H. pylori and stomach cancer have been such findings. Apparently, sometimes cancer cells contain fungal DNA (not well studied though, could be contaminants as well).

Edited the last sentence.

dillydogg3• 10 months ago

Probably not, given the multiple conditions that are "sterile" inflammation that lead to neoplasms. Consider the example of asbestos; the particles lodge in the lungs which lead to a robust immune response that attempts to clear it, which has a strong association with the development of lung neoplasms. I'm not aware that the link between the inflammation and the development of the neoplasm is well understood. Autoimmune diseases and chronic GERD are other examples.

jghn2• 10 months ago

are we sure inflammation is the root cause and not just a bystander?

The GP stated that it was *a* cause, not *the* cause

jszymborski3• 10 months ago

Part of the reason cancer is such an interesting field of study in my personal opinion is:

(1) You get a lot of these chicken-or-egg situations where the answer is more like "chicken-AND-egg".

(2) Cancer is almost always the result of a million things going wrong at once... it's a slow unravelling of the bonkers number of safe-guards our cells have to keep them healthy and normal.

Inflammation is a normal part of a healthy, functioning body. It can be caused by anything from scraping your knee to getting a cold. It's useful, and as your comment says, it is an important part to fighting off infections which themselves in rare cases cause cancer. It also plays a pathological role in some diseased like auto-immune disorders, IBS, meningitis, etc...

Inflammation, both the healthy and pathological sort, can help set the stage for tumour to form by contributing to the formation of what's known as a "tumour microenvironment" [0]. Chronic inflammation, often caused by disease, is more likely to keep up this permissive environment than one-off cases, and therefore more likely to result in a tumour

By the way, we understand DNA mutation/damage to work similarly. It happens all the time naturally, and sometimes mutations are fortuitous, but mostly they are ironed out by the cells machinery. Increasing the rate of mutation can overwhelm that machinery and cause tumours to snowball.

So, that's how inflammation can contribute to the initialization of tumours or at least environments that are more permissive of tumours. Tumours, however, also might cause inflammatory response to promote cancer progression through hijacking cell signalling, promoting epithelial-mesenchymal transitions, etc... [1].

We've known inflammation has been linked to cancer since at least 1863 [2], so this is pretty well-trodden territory. The immune system and inflammation is extremely complicated (or at least, I always found it to be), so I'm also not surprised that there are a lot of mysteries lurking.

Finally, to answer your question: I'm sure in some cases inflammation is just bystander. My understanding is that inflammation is not the primary mechanism by which HPV causes cancer, so it is very easy to believe it to be a bystander in that case. H. pylori is a good example of chronic GI inflammation that raises your risk of cancer by way of inflammation. I'm not familiar with the fungal DNA research, so can't comment.

Also disclaimer: It's been a while since I've studied cancer directly, I'm more of a computational biologist these days. Sorry if I made an error here.

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6831096/

[1] https://blog.cellsignal.com/hallmarks-of-cancer-tumor-promot...

[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

ashleyn• 10 months ago

What is the "80% cause" of chronic inflammation most people should be aware of, so that people may be able to make lifestyle changes to reduce it? What blood tests can I have ordered to measure it?

nradov• 10 months ago

Excess adipose tissue is a major source of chronic inflammation.

Maxion• 10 months ago

You don't really need blood tests.

Just eat a varied diet, low in ultra processed foods (preferrably none). Limit refined carbs/sugars, excercise regularly, spend time in nature, and don't live in built-up areas with lots of polution. Avoid fragrances, PFAS/PFOA, pftalates and the like.

user____name• 10 months ago

Chronic stress is a major one.

Tycho• 10 months ago

Don’t think I’ve seen “discovering”, the present participle of the verb, used in a headline like this before.

harvey9• 10 months ago

I would like to live in a world where "Breaking News!" came from science labs instead of red carpets though.

FollowingTheDao4• 10 months ago

Discovery? HA! Traditional Chinese Medicine already knew the body cures cancer by boosting the immune system. Did they no how? Who cares?

Harnessing the power of traditional Chinese medicine monomers and compound prescriptions to boost cancer immunotherapy

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10684919/

Antitumor effects of immunity-enhancing traditional Chinese medicine

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31710893/

Edit: Please comment on what is wrong if you will downvote this because I am open to discussion and correction.

Modern society only patents things that were already known and then makes them out of reach for the common man.

blondie9x• 10 months ago

This sounds like an application of ML. But we can't call it ML anymore right? Need to call it AI in the media whenever possible.

jghn2• 10 months ago

ML has been applied in cancer research for longer than ML has been in vogue

dredmorbius2• 10 months ago

Article appears to be a word:

These non-mutagenic carcinogens instead seem to the body’s immune system.

I suspect "seem to target" or "seem to trigger" was intended.

(The Economist's editing is usually superb, this is a pretty glaring error.)

arthurcolle• 10 months ago

Report it

arcastroe• 10 months ago

Article appears to be (missing) a word. I see what you did there.

gverrilla• 10 months ago

SEO?

dredmorbius2• 10 months ago

Corrected in a subsequent A.T. capture, the missing word being "exploit":

<https://archive.is/lY9ee#selection-1419.48-1419.55>

tsoukase2• 10 months ago

Cancer is a hard problem. It has deeper interconnected mechanisms long before any inflammation or observable change. Cancer is caused due to slow incremental addition of DNA mutations that lead to cell division control failure. This first step is intractable to reverse. All the next stages just lead to early or late diagnosis.

teddy-smith• 10 months ago

This first step is intractable to reverse

Why?

tsoukase2• 10 months ago

Because of the interplay between dozens of unknown regulating genes that effect in an obscure way the final decision to trigger the cell mitosis (division). Even if we ever uncover the whole cascade mechanism, how can we stop this monstrous process in everyone of the billion cells that are able to divide? We still have no idea of any drug, viral vector or DNA fragment that can intervene tissue wide.

josvdwest• 10 months ago

Is this related to chronic inflammation from glucose spikes?

Scientists are discovering a powerful new way to prevent cancer

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