Xantha Latham, Deputy Science Editor
00:01 27 July 2024, Updated 00:01 27 July 2024
Scientists have discovered that a bacteria commonly found in the mouth can ‘melt away’ some cancers.
Researchers were “surprised” to find that head and neck cancer patients who had Fusobacterium in their tumors had “significantly better outcomes.”
The exact biological mechanism behind this relationship is being further investigated by experts.
In laboratory studies, the team from Guy’s and St Thomas’s at King’s College London put small amounts of bacteria into petri dishes with cancer cells and left them for a few days.
They found that the number of head and neck cancer cells decreased by 70 to 99 percent after being infected with Fusobacterium.
Further analysis of 155 patients with head and neck cancer found that those who had bacteria in their tumors were more likely to survive than those who did not have bacteria in their tumors, and had a 65 percent reduced risk of death.
The researchers hope these findings could help improve treatments for patients with head and neck cancers — which include cancers of the mouth, throat, larynx, nose and sinuses.
Experts said there has been very little medical progress in this area over the past 20 years, and it is hoped the discovery will lead to new treatments in the future.
“In essence, what we found was that when you find these bacteria in head and neck cancers, they have significantly better outcomes,” said senior author Dr. Miguel Reis Ferreira.
‘The second thing we found is that this bacterium is able to kill cancer in cell culture.
‘This research shows that these bacteria play a more complex role in their relationship with cancer than previously known – namely that they essentially melt away head and neck cancer cells.
‘This could mean that we can use these bacteria to better predict which patients are more likely to have good or poor outcomes.’
He said: ‘Based on this, we can modify their treatment to make it more gentle for patients who have better outcomes, or more intense for patients whose cancer is more likely to recur.’
“Our findings are remarkable and quite surprising,” said lead author Dr Anjali Chander, senior clinical research fellow at King’s College London.
The team has published a paper on their findings in the journal Cancer Communications, describing how Fusobacterium is ‘toxic’ to head and neck cancer and how its presence ‘may determine better prognosis’.
“Detection of Fusobacterium was associated with both better overall survival and better disease-specific survival,” the authors wrote.
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