Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), the sixth most common cancer in the world, is a terrible disease, according to a study published in Cancer Communications. There has been no recent progress in his therapy.
According to Guys and St Thomas, scientists may have found new hope in a bacterium called fusobacterium that promotes colon cancer but prevents it from spreading to the head and neck.
According to this research, these bacteria practically hide head and neck cancer cells, suggesting that their connection to cancer is more complicated than previously thought.
Lead author Dr Miguel Reis Ferreira noted that this finding should be weighed against their documented function in worsening cancer, including bowel cancer.
Data from 155 head and neck cancer patients were evaluated by a global team of researchers led by Dr. Ferreira.
Notably, patients with naturally occurring Fusobacteria levels higher than those with lower levels consistently had a better prognosis (Guys & St. Thomas, 2013).
According to The Guardian, their chances of survival increased by 65 percent.
70 to 90 percent of cancers disappeared in the lab after the bacteria were left in a petri dish containing cancer cells for several days.
“You put it in cancer in very small amounts and it starts killing it very quickly,” he said, according to The Guardian.
Since fusobacterium promotes the growth of cancer in the gut, they hypothesized that it would make cancer cells in the head and neck worse; however, they may have found a breakthrough treatment for this type of cancer instead.
“At the end of a few days, it completely destroys the cancer,” said Dr. Ferrier.
While the project is still in its early stages, they hope to learn more about how these results could affect patient outcomes in cancers other than head and neck.
It provides new opportunities for experimenting with bacteria that scientists might not have thought were effective, such as those that stimulate the growth of certain types of cancer but destroy them when given to other types.
Since the study is still in its early stages, they aim to further explore the potential effects of these results on patient outcomes related to head and neck cancer, as well as other unexplored variations.
It provides new possibilities for working with bacteria that scientists might not have thought were effective, such as those that, when introduced into different types of cancer, can destroy the cancer that the original strain supported.
“Our findings are remarkable and very surprising. We had a eureka moment when we discovered that our international colleagues had also found data that confirmed the discovery,” Dr. Anjali Chander, senior clinical researcher at King’s College London and lead author at Guys and St. Thomas.
