gtyhumanbrainjp110921wgScience is amazing because sometimes what was previously thought to be dangerous or bad can be turned into something useful or good. Take salmonella for example, a bacterial disease that is typically associated with eating undercooked or raw food such as eggs, chicken, milk, and so on.

However it seems that over at Duke University, biomedical engineers have successfully taken a strain of salmonella that causes food poisoning and turned it against brain cancer (via Engadget). What this means is that instead of you getting sick from salmonella, the bacteria will actually be able to destroy brain tumors.

So far their test on rats have found an increased survival rate of 20% over 100 days, which is estimated to be about 10 human years. According to Johnathan Lyon, a PhD student who is working with the team, “Since glioblastoma is so aggressive and difficult to treat, any change in the median survival rate is a big deal, and since few survive a glioblastoma diagnosis indefinitely, a 20 percent effective cure rate is phenomenal and very encouraging.”

As for the 80% that did not survive, it seems that the treatment did not change the length of time of survival, which means that it wasn’t as if the treatment shortened the lives of the rats. The scientists concluded that the reason is due to the inconsistencies of the bacteria’s penetration into the tumor, or that the tumor was more aggressive than the bacteria. However overall all rats that were subjected to the treatment did show initial signs of improvement.

Naturally we are a long way from having this treatment find its way into hospitals since human testing has yet to begin, but it is a good sign for the future.

Filed in Medical. Read more about and .

Discover more from Ubergizmo

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading