Cancer breakthrough: scientists discover harmless bacteria in soil kills cancer tumors

Monday, September 05, 2011 by: S. L. Baker, features writer 

(NaturalNews) Cancer remains one of the most feared diseases on the planet -- and cancer patients being treated by mainstream medicine are usually bombarded with radiation and subjected to toxic chemotherapy that destroys healthy cells and weakens the body while trying to kill tumors.

Thankfully, as NaturalNews readers are aware, a growing body of research is revealing that many natural substances have cancer prevention and treatment potential, including Mediterranean type foods that fight prostate cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/025659.html) and walnuts which contain breast cancer preventive phytochemicals.

Now there's evidence a cure for cancer may be all around us and is as common as dirt. In fact, it's something in dirt.

Researcher Aleksandra Kubiak just presented the startling discovery at the Society for General Microbiology's Autumn Conference currently underway at the University of York in the UK. She and other members of a research team from the University of Nottingham and the University of Maastricht have found that a strain of harmless bacteria that is widespread in soil is actually deadly -- not to people but to cancerous tumors.

The researchers have developed a therapy using Clostridium sporogenes, a bacterium common in dirt. They found that when spores of the bacteria are injected into cancer patients, they only grow in solid tumors. Inside the cancerous growth, the bacteria produce a specific enzyme that activates a cancer drug. The results? Unlike current chemotherapy, the natural bacteria treatment causes only the cancer cells to be destroyed while healthy cells are left unharmed.

"Clostridia are an ancient group of bacteria that evolved on the planet before it had an oxygen-rich atmosphere and so they thrive in low oxygen conditions. When Clostridia spores are injected into a cancer patient, they will only grow in oxygen-depleted environments, i.e. the center of solid tumors. This is a totally natural phenomenon, which requires no fundamental alterations and is exquisitely specific," head researcher Professor Nigel Minton said in a statement to the media. "We can exploit this specificity to kill tumor cells but leave healthy tissue unscathed."

He added that the new discovery could lead to a simple and safe procedure for curing a wide range of solid tumors. "This therapy will kill all types of tumor cell. The treatment is superior to a surgical procedure, especially for patients at high risk or with difficult tumor locations," Professor Minton said.

"We anticipate that the strain we have developed will be used in a clinical trial in 2013 led by Jan Theys and Philippe Lambin at the University of Maastricht in The Netherlands. A successful outcome could lead to its adoption as a frontline therapy for treating solid tumors."

For more information:

http://www.sgm.ac.uk/