The bacteria can kill up to 99% of certain cancer cells.
A common mouth bacteria can make some types of cancer cells ‘melt’ away, new research has found.
Scientists said they were ‘brutally surprised’ to discover Fusobacterium can kill up to 99% of cells linked to head and neck cancers, offering patients ‘much better outcomes’.
In the mouth, it’s a particularly common bacteria linked to gum disease and plaque buildup.
The result of the study, conducted by scientists at Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College London, was unexpected as Fusobacterium has been linked to the progression of bowel cancer.
The research started with modelling to help identify which bacteria may be of interest to further investigate.
Once identified, scientists put the Fusobacterium in Petri dishes with the cancer cells and left them there for a couple of days.
When they returned they found that the cancer had almost disappeared.
They also carried out analysis of tumour data of 155 patients with head and neck cancer.
It showed that those with Fusobacterium bacteria within their cancer had better survival odds compared with those who did not.
Fusobacterium detectability in head and neck cancers was associated with a 65% reduction in risk of death compared with patients whose cancers did not contain the bacteria.
It is hoped the findings could help guide treatment for patients with head and neck cancer, which includes cancers of the mouth, throat, voice box, nose and sinuses.
Experts said it’s a particularly exciting development as there have been few therapeutic advances in head and neck cancer in the last 20 years.
Senior study author Dr Miguel Reis Ferreira, from Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals, said: ‘This research reveals that these bacteria play a more complex role than previously known in their relationship with cancer – that they essentially melt head and neck cancer cells.
‘The research in colorectal cancer indicates that these bacteria are bad, and that was kind of ingrained into our minds, and we were expecting to find the same thing.
‘When we started finding things the other way around, we were brutally surprised.’
Dr Reis Ferreira, a consultant in head and neck cancer, said that before the lab work the team expected Fusobacterium would encourage these cancers to grow or make them more resistant to radiotherapy.
But they actually found ‘at the end of a few days, it just destroys the cancer completely’.
‘You put it in the cancer at very low quantities and it just starts killing it very quickly,’ he said.
The UK team’s findings were validated by a study in Italy that saw the same results.
Dr Reis Ferreira added: ‘What it could mean is that we can use these bacteria to better predict which patients are more likely to have good or worse outcomes, and based on that, we could change their treatment so make it kinder in the patients that have better outcomes, or make it more intense in patients that are more likely to have their cancers come back.”
Scientists have published a paper on the finding in the journal Cancer Communications, which describes how Fusobacterium is ‘toxic’ for head and neck cancer and how its presence ‘may determine a better prognosis’.
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