Salmonella is tested to fight cancer cells
WASHINGTON - While most of the country is trying to avoid salmonella by not eating jalapeño peppers, Dr. Neil Forbes is embracing the bacteria to help fight a deadly disease: cancer.
Forbes, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is arming the toxin to burrow itself into tumors and eat cancer cells. A handful of other researchers across the country are using powerful bacteria, such as salmonella, to target tumors.
Unlike the strain of salmonella that has sickened more than 1,200 people in recent months, the genetically engineered salmonella that Forbes uses can be easily cleared by the body's immune system before symptoms like diarrhea arise.
His work, and other efforts like it, highlights the intense search for treatments that target cancer cells without causing debilitating side effects such as weight and hair loss, excessive bleeding and fatigue that are common with radiation and chemotherapy.
Salmonella, a type of bacteria, naturally accumulate around tumors because bacteria like to eat, and tumors are a great source of food. Forbes, using a $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, has found a way to drive the salmonella, which swim like sperm, into a section of tumors where chemotherapy is generally ineffective.
Studies in mice show the treatment has potential. All mice with tumors who received saline solution were dead after 30 days, while those receiving salmonella and zaps of radiation were alive after 30 days. And none got sick from the toxin.
Studies scheduled to be published in the next few months in a leading cancer journal will show that Forbes's salmonella, zapped with a low-dose of radiation, do a better job of shrinking tumors in mice than does radiation therapy.
Forbes said his research doesn't represent a cure for a disease that kills more than 1,500 Americans a day, though several cancer patients contacted him about their interest in participating in human trials after news of his research surfaced in January.
"I think there's a lot of desire with cancer patients who have reached the end and want to try something new," Forbes said.
Chemotherapy and radiation do a good job of eliminating actively dividing cancer cells, but, in the process, kill healthy cells too, often leaving patients without hair and greatly fatigued.
Forbes hasn't studied his treatment in humans, but says such studies are on the radar. He said he is trying to perfect the process for steering the salmonella into the tumors, and wants to get to the point where he can use minimal radiation in tandem with the salmonella treatment.