Frog-derived gut bacterium eradicates tumors in mice

https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/new-study-frog-derived-gut-bacterium

by mpweiher • 22 days ago

349 182 22 days ago

thefocalpoints.com

tristanj• 22 days ago

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1217/

p0w3n3d• 22 days ago

this one is in mice. I guess we're running in circles now.

hahahaa2• 22 days ago

"in mice" as a non-perjorative, wow ;)

cheschire• 22 days ago

Mice tumors, the scourge of humanity.

boxed• 22 days ago

Not really the same in this situation though.

drcongo• 22 days ago

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?

plasticeagle• 22 days ago

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.

aa-jv3• 22 days ago

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 ..

vixen99• 22 days ago

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...

aa-jv3• 21 days ago

You know, I was hoping for more dragon'y/pixy'ish things, though .. ;)

criddell• 22 days ago

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/

aa-jv3• 21 days ago

Yes, that was indeed fascinating. I think we're not that far removed from the era of witches, personally .. but I say that, as a sorcerer who casts spells to make things happen, mind ..

cedws2• 22 days ago

Bryan Johnson might be interested in IV’ing frog gut bacteria.

N_Lens2• 22 days ago

How rude! Bryan is no labrat /j

VladVladikoff2• 22 days ago

Is Bryan Johnson a mouse with cancer?

cedws2• 22 days ago

Not yet.

playerm1• 21 days ago

Vampire, I think

functionmouse• 22 days ago

Mice are having a great year

N_Lens2• 22 days ago

Century*

psychoslave2• 22 days ago

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.

hack13122• 22 days ago

They told me they’re happy enough when I was delivering them cookies.

jagaerglad• 22 days ago

The pride and sense of achievement they ought to feel that members of their kind did something should be enough to feel superior though

hootz2• 22 days ago

To be honest, they are pretty cute, they don't deserve cancer.

tclancy5• 22 days ago

Spoken like someone who has never had to rebuild a generator or find out the hard way car wiring is mainly soy-based nowadays.

rich_sasha• 22 days ago

The ones genetically engineered to get Alzheimer's or the ones engineered to get cancer?

vitally3643• 22 days ago

Trick question, all lab rodents are so inbred that they get cancer anyway

CuriouslyC2• 22 days ago

Plot twist, doesn't matter, even the control group is going to be dead soon if it's not already.

pennomi• 22 days ago

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.

therobots927• 22 days ago

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…

xingped3• 22 days ago

~~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

jimnotgym• 22 days ago

100 years of trying everything to kill bacteria, and we find they can be jolly useful

gpderetta• 22 days ago

humanity has been producing useful things from bacteria for thousands of things already.

degamad2• 22 days ago

Cheese!

pestatije• 22 days ago

lager

nephihaha• 22 days ago

Just wait til people learn that viruses have some positive uses after decades of being told how awful they are.

rimworld• 22 days ago

lol

ballenf• 22 days ago

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.

cyanydeez• 22 days ago

maybe your dog is chasing a high from some rare toad mutation...

psychoslave2• 22 days ago

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.

micromacrofoot• 22 days ago

unpleasant
happily

I think you answered your own question really, a lot of animals just enjoy eating them (humans included!)

pjerem• 21 days ago

Tbf, I wouldn't trust my dog's judgement on what I should happily eat.

petesergeant• 22 days ago

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

degamad2• 22 days ago

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.

BigTTYGothGF• 22 days ago

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"

VMG• 22 days ago

Crank blog, very skeptical

tiffanyh• 22 days ago

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/

scoot• 22 days ago

Doesn’t that simply make this blog spam?

toraway• 21 days ago

OP submitted a Substack newsletter as a source with recent posts including such topics as vaccine “deaths” during COVID, their link to autism, and Fauci bioweapon conspiracy theories implicating the entire scientific establishment.

With comments on the current post agreeing that the shadowy cabal will suppress yet another miracle treatment to keep for themselves, so the “goyim” can be sold poison.

dawnerd• 21 days ago

It’s also just pretty obvious ai slop.

oofbey2• 22 days ago

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.

algoth1• 22 days ago

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

bcjdjsndon4• 22 days ago

Fully curing mice is the baseline for a treatment to even be considered for further evaluation

If it never works as well if at all in humans, maybe mice are too different?

oofbey2• 21 days ago

It’s not that. The tumors they create in mice are just really fragile compared to natural tumors. Natural tumors that actually cause problems have probably grown for years and learned to avoid immune responses. They’re not densely packed and easy to get into all the parts.

This kind of treatment triggers an immune response, which the model tumors have never had to fight before. So it’s just an easy target.

jmorenoamor• 22 days ago

Sorry but the site looks too sensationalist for me.

Is there any other source?

romx-cell• 22 days ago

We are destroying ecosystems so fast that there will be no frogs and we will regret it. The same with all the nature

sevenzero8• 22 days ago

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.

vrganj• 22 days ago

People here strive to be the ones hiding in the bunkers as the world burns.

ajkjk• 22 days ago

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?

Leonard_of_Q• 22 days ago

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.

CuriouslyC2• 22 days ago

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.

notact• 22 days ago

Can you help me understand how alternatives to capitalism, such as central planning, would necessarily be better at preserving the planet?

Rodmine• 22 days ago

It's the bottom 99% who destroy the planet by not killing themselves.

wonderwonder3• 21 days ago

The planet is fine friend. The cool thing about the relentless march of technology is that we will eventually fix anything we break along the way. There is no limit to what we can achieve. There is certainly nothing you can do about it so go outside, lie by the pool or the ocean, enjoy life.

slibhb2• 22 days ago

There will, in fact, continue to be frogs.

One theory of where posts like this come from: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2527316123

MarkusQ• 22 days ago

You managed to break out of the trap!

Thank you for this; I'd not seen it, but needed to.

beepbooptheory2• 21 days ago

If its all just people trying to be different, why is it always the same refrains in the same way?

bcjdjsndon4• 22 days ago

We are destroying ecosystems so fast

Definitely changing, I'm not so sure about destroying. Your house displaced an ecosystem so you could live there but I bet in your ethical system that's fine right? What a surprise

amanaplanacanal2• 22 days ago

As they say, "there is no ethical consumption." I've done my part by not having any kids.

tekacs• 22 days ago

I'm astounded that this thread doesn't contain at least one 'eat the frog' joke.

https://asana.com/resources/eat-the-frog

paulryanrogers• 22 days ago

Because this is HN and not Reddit?

gus_massa3• 22 days ago

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.
[...]

bcjdjsndon4• 22 days ago

and have less ethical problems than experiments in humans

More like, what's a mouse gonna do about it?

duozerk• 21 days ago

Wait patiently until their planet-sized computer gives them the answer they've been waiting for and then take their revenge

1234letshaveatw3• 22 days ago

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

gus_massa3• 20 days ago

Every additional day is a blessing, but each treatment has possible nasty side effects, require time for administration [1], time to fill the insurance paperwork and a cost that sometimes must be covered by the family. You don't want to waste a full week locked inside a hospital to get 1 extra day.

Anyway, 5 years is a long time, so I agree shorter times are useful and interesting. But, 5 years is used as an arbitrary threshold like in https://www.webmd.com/cancer/remission-what-does-it-mean so I think it's a good comparison to put "eradicate" in the title.

simonreiff• 22 days ago

I disagree that the title "hides" that the title was small and that it disappeared for two weeks. The surviving contingent on the E. americana strain was evaluated for 60 days, and the tumor doesn't look particularly small based on the picture on page 8 of the paper. I think the study size is small (n=5) so we'd like to see more large-scale studies next, but it's already a strong result to show 5/5 (100%) at p < 0.0001 for multiple primary endpoints and the absence of success from comparable bacteria is helpful to frame future research. The absence of long-term side effects and only transient weight-loss followed by 15-day weight gain is also intriguing. I'm not a doctor, oncologist, or cancer researcher, but the methodology looks sound and appropriate to me, as does the title, based on reading the paper.

gus_massa3• 21 days ago

The surviving contingent on the E. americana strain was evaluated for 60 days

The article says

The surviving contingent on the E. americana strain was evaluated for 60 days (Supplementary Figure S5).

The supplementary material only shows a reshot with cancer cells at the day 30. All the other parts also days a total of 60 days. At day 0 the cancer cells were injected, approximately at day 10 the bacteria were injected, and approximately at day 20 the cancer disappeared. So correct my initial comment and say that it's 40 days cancer free.

When the title says "eradication" most people interpret "forever". That is too optimistic and unrealistic, but a 5 years survival rate is somewhat a standard point. 15 or 40 days is too short to know if there are some hidden metastasis, they need more time to grow and be visible.

Also, the initial treatment is only 10 days after the initial shot with cancer cells. IIRC it's an aggressive cancer variant in mice variant that has a crappy inmune system. Gut cancer in humans are detected when they block the guts or bleed or in periodic colonoscopy every few years, so they usually have more than 10 days to develop before detection.

Note that this setup in mice is good for initial test and to filter the promising treatments as they did, but it's difficult to extrapolate to long term treatment of humans.

raxxorraxor• 22 days ago

Don't know about mice, but rats more or less have a 50% tumor/cancer chance if they really do get to live 1+ years. I think for some lines it goes up to 90%+.

wincy• 22 days ago

Every rat (4 now) I've owned except one has died of cancer. Or at least, they died with cancer, I'm not a veterinarian. The one that didn't got the flu or something at 6 months and died of some respiratory issue.

kvgr• 22 days ago

Cant it be just some immunity reaction induced by the bacteria what would not translate to humans?

imzadi• 21 days ago

It is an immunity reaction. The bacteria multiplied in the tumors until they triggered an immunity response, which caused the body to destroy the tumors along with the bacteria. Whether or not it translates to humans remains to be seen.

sheepscreek• 21 days ago

Moneyshot:

The three bacterial strains that successfully induced tumor regression (E. americana, C. portucalensis, and E. ludwigii) were all identified as facultative anaerobic bacteria.
This finding is consistent with established principles of bacterial cancer therapy, as anaerobic bacteria possess the unique capability to selectively accumulate and colonize within solid tumors due to the characteristically hypoxic and immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment.
This selective tumor colonization likely enabled efficient intratumoral bacterial proliferation and, in conjunction with activated immune cell responses, contributed significantly to the observed tumor regression phenomena.

Said in other words, the tumours created the ideal environment for anaerobic bacteria to multiply. Eventually causing a reaction from the body’s own immune response (which ignored the tumour but successfully detected the bacterial growth).

So one of the reasons this worked well was that the bacteria acted as a target for the immune cells, and they proliferated inside the tumour thus weakening it.

shostack• 21 days ago

The world would be a smarter place if every study and resulting news article were required by law to include something like this at the top.

GaProgMan• 22 days ago

So the Bursar at Unseen University was on to something this whole time? And we all thought was mad!

andrewstuart• 22 days ago

Mice are so goddam healthy.

They get all the good medical breakthroughs.

bell-cot2• 22 days ago

From what I've heard of murine health and life expectancy stats, all those "good medical breakthroughs" aren't actually doing them much good.

Vs. there's a whole lotta of money to be made in mouse medicine.

Symbolic, perhaps?

frellus2• 22 days ago

I kid you not, there was a movie with Sean Connery called "Medicine Man" (1992) with this exact same theme.

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).

tclancy5• 22 days ago

For a Sean Connery movie it was bizarre

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.

SideburnsOfDoom• 22 days ago

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.

frellus2• 22 days ago

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.

RockyMcNuts• 22 days ago

You're the man now, dog!

6P58r3MXJSLi• 22 days ago

I've seen the movie several times. In Italian, the title was translated simply as Mato Grosso, which makes it oddly geographically specific. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Connery definitely starred in even weirder movies. Have you seen Zardoz?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070948/

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNmI2NjI2OWYtMzU5NS00...

klibertp• 21 days ago

Have you seen Zardoz?

Oh, yes! Just once, but Connery, in just underpants and boots, battling some surreal head-shaped apparitions, is something I won't ever forget. I have no idea what the plot was about - but that's OK, because I had no idea about that either during or just after watching :D

A movie so bad it's kind of good - though second-hand embarrassment (at the performances, effects, plot, characters) was a bit hard to bear at points.

lizardking• 22 days ago

Never been a better time to be a mouse

Geee• 22 days ago

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 these strains to target different tumors / specific tumor samples.

Ewingella Americana itself is a quite common bacterial species, but it seems that the effective strain is the frog-derived and cultivated one. So don't go injecting yourself with a random E. Americana.

Full article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2025.2...

giwook• 22 days ago

Great news for mice everywhere.

patchtopic• 22 days ago

rest of the site has the usual "cooker" insane brainrot ivermectin, etc crap

westurner• 22 days ago

Maybe a bit of CPMV (Cowpea Mosaic Virus) for the cancer too ah?

CPMV for Cancer.

Cowpeas are also known as Black-Eyed Peas; which are regarded as good luck and used to be in pastures and thereby human diets.

froh42• 22 days ago

A single dose of a high velocity bullet also eradicates 100% of tumors.

_aleph2c_• 22 days ago

The website is misnamed, it should be called thefecalpoints.com

cg805• 22 days ago

It's like ozempic all over again! God bless the reptiles

__MatrixMan__• 22 days ago

They say:

Outperforming chemotherapy and immunotherapy

And then later:

As a facultative anaerobe, it preferentially accumulates within the hypoxic tumor microenvironment, where it rapidly proliferates and exerts direct cytotoxic effects while simultaneously activating a broad immune response. Within hours, tumors become infiltrated with T cells, B cells, and neutrophils, accompanied by surges in key inflammatory cytokines like TNF-α and IFN-γ.

So this is immunotherapy. Although it is clever immunotherapy. Gut bacteria doesn't usually survive long in the bloodstream because there's too much oxygen present (that's part of why it's gut bacteria, its unlikely to go all Leeroy Jenkins on the rest of the organism).

The TME is often so densely packed with growth that its less oxidative than surrounding tissue. So the bacteria that don't find a tumor don't last long enough to cause problems and the ones that do find one see it as a bit of a refuge from the problematic environment and colonize it specifically, throwing off whatever subterfuge the tumor was using to keep the immune system from getting involved.

It's a bit like throwing a brick through the window of a bank that was being quietly robbed by somebody else. The cops show up and realize they've been overlooking a separate problem.

code_lettuce• 21 days ago

Now do Astrocytoma.

bsiverly• 21 days ago

McCullough’s outlet (Nicolas Hulscher writes for the McCullough Foundation) has a track record of overselling single-study preclinical results with breathless framing… and mice are basically clones of one another. Interesting but not a game changer.

Eat more fiber and fermented foods yo

DamnInteresting• 21 days ago

This is reminiscent of Coley's Toxins[1], an early experimental cancer treatment using Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria. Coley and other practitioners claimed some substantial success, but the mechanism of action was not understood, and the treatment varied so much that scientific verification was elusive.

(Note: I am affiliated with the linked website, but I didn't write the article in question)

[1] https://www.damninteresting.com/coleys-cancer-killing-concoc...

stanfordkid• 21 days ago

Wow amazing. I am very curious how the spider "learns" to do this technique, that it works, and to repeat it. Is this somehow encoded in the DNA of the spider? Clearly spiders don't rear their children or learn / communicate so it must be evolved and encoded somewhere in either the genes or the epigenetics. Nature is amazing.

OutOfHere• 21 days ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46283089

Frog-derived gut bacterium eradicates tumors in mice

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