103 comments

  • gus_massa an hour ago

    Previus discussion (from the university press release) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46306894 (498 points | 6 months ago | 140 comments) I'll rehash my comment

    They used mice, because they are good for early tries. The researchers had 9 bacterias and only 1 was successful. Experiments in mice are cheaper and have less ethical problems than experiments in humans. (Hey! They even injected the cancer cells in mice and waited a week until it grow. Nobody will approve something like that in humans.)

    The title claims that the tumos were eradicated. The title hides that it was a small tumor they injected in the mice and more importantly that it disappeared for two weeks until the experiment ended. It's difficult to guess if it will be useful for humans with bigger tumors because they are harder to detect, and it would work for a interesting enough period like 5 years.

    There is also and old comment by octaane https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46308732 I'll quote it partially:

    > Several things trigger my bullshit meter. Quote:

    >> "This dramatically surpasses the therapeutic efficacy of current standard treatments, including immune checkpoint inhibitors (anti-PD-L1 antibody) and liposomal doxorubicin (chemotherapy agents)"

    > PD-L1 monoclonal antibodies are only effective against cancers that are PD-L1 positive. [...] Many tumor types are not PD-l1 positive.

    > Doxy is an ancient SOC chemo.

    > [...]

    • bcjdjsndon 13 minutes ago

      > and have less ethical problems than experiments in humans

      More like, what's a mouse gonna do about it?

    • 1234letshaveatw 13 minutes ago

      I think you overestimate the "interesting enough period". How much would it be worth for some patients to go into remission for a year? or even 6 months? The answer is a lot

  • frellus 24 minutes ago

    I kid you not, there was a movie with Sean Connery called "Medicine Man" (1992) with this exact same theme.

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104839/?ref_=fn_t_1

    In it, Connery finds what looks to be a rare natural cure to all cancer in the Rain Forest (spoiler: not a frog, but equally as weird), and is literally battling the nearby deforesting and bulldozers. For a Sean Connery movie it was bizarre (As a young teen, I saw it in the theaters.. quite a bit less action than a 007 movie but good drama and dramatic Sean Connery acting).

    • 6P58r3MXJSLi 6 minutes ago

      I've seen the movie several times. In Italian, the title was translated simply as Mato Grosso, which makes it oddly geographically specific. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      Connery definitely starred in even weirder movies. Have you seen Zardoz?

      https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070948/

      https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNmI2NjI2OWYtMzU5NS00...

    • tclancy 17 minutes ago

      >For a Sean Connery movie it was bizarre

      Buddy, if you're trying to tell me it's weirder than Darby O'Gill and the Little People, I am going to need more than Sir Connery in a ponytail.

      • frellus 10 minutes ago

        Yeah, with a movie like that in his credits, it seems a miracle he was ever selected to be James Bond. His radar for picking great movies was equally bad as it was good.

        • stogot 8 minutes ago

          He had to pay his bills

      • SideburnsOfDoom 14 minutes ago

        > I am going to need more than Sir Connery in a ponytail

        Check out Zardoz: Connery with a ponytail, a pistol in hand, wearing thigh-high boots and a mankini.

        And a giant flying stone head that vomits guns.

        I am not joking.

  • Geee 9 minutes ago

    Very cool research. They just injected mice with 45 different bacterial strains, and then isolated and cultivated the ones that had the best performance. It seems that it might be quite easy to cultivate these strains to target different tumors / specific tumor samples.

    Full article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2025.2...

  • tiffanyh an hour ago

    To give more credit to this blog post, the NIH published findings on this same subject last year.

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12710904/

    • scoot 3 minutes ago

      Doesn’t that simply make this blog spam?

  • functionmouse 2 hours ago

    Mice are having a great year

    • hootz an hour ago

      To be honest, they are pretty cute, they don't deserve cancer.

      • tclancy 15 minutes ago

        Spoken like someone who has never had to rebuild a generator or find out the hard way car wiring is mainly soy-based nowadays.

        • bcjdjsndon 12 minutes ago

          "Spoken like"? God I hate rick and Morty that boring show

          • giwook 6 minutes ago

            "Spoken like" was a phrase before Rick and Morty lol they didn't invent the English language.

    • rich_sasha 41 minutes ago

      The ones genetically engineered to get Alzheimer's or the ones engineered to get cancer?

      • CuriouslyC 31 minutes ago

        Plot twist, doesn't matter, even the control group is going to be dead soon if it's not already.

      • vitally3643 38 minutes ago

        Trick question, all lab rodents are so inbred that they get cancer anyway

    • N_Lens an hour ago

      Century*

    • psychoslave an hour ago

      Hmm, mice get much impressive medical results to be linked to here and there, but overall it’s not certain the species benefit that much in happiness and fulfilment.

      • hack1312 an hour ago

        They told me they’re happy enough when I was delivering them cookies.

      • jagaerglad an hour ago

        The pride and sense of achievement they ought to feel that members of their kind did something should be enough to feel superior though

  • romx-cell an hour ago

    We are destroying ecosystems so fast that there will be no frogs and we will regret it. The same with all the nature

    • slibhb 15 minutes ago

      There will, in fact, continue to be frogs.

      One theory of where posts like this come from: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2527316123

    • bcjdjsndon 7 minutes ago

      > We are destroying ecosystems so fast

      Definitely changing, I'm not so sure about destroying. Your house displaced an ecosystem so you could live there but I bet in your ethical system that's fine right? What a surprise

    • sevenzero an hour ago

      We get what we deserve. We let the top 1% destroy our planet and also let them live the longest in their bunkers, while we deal with the repercussions of not having done enough. But I've noticed that folks on HN are very very fond of capitalism, so it's no point arguing against it on here and on the effects of wealth accumulation and greed.

      • CuriouslyC 33 minutes ago

        The distribution here is bimodal. There are plenty of Elon-shilling exploit the solar system types, but also plenty of skeptical types who see all the futurism bullshit as a lever to maintain control.

      • notact 21 minutes ago

        Can you help me understand how alternatives to capitalism, such as central planning, would necessarily be better at preserving the planet?

        • someonebaggy 19 minutes ago

          The alternatives to capitalism are a wide spectrum, ranging from totalitarian dictatorship (aka central planning) all the way to free markets with sensible regulations. What they all have in common is not being capitalism, i.e. not putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest.

          • 1234letshaveatw 10 minutes ago

            It's must be so interesting to live regulation free! Where abouts are you from?

          • inglor_cz 9 minutes ago

            Unregulated capitalism does not exist anywhere on this planet, and the US is in fact quite a bureaucratic country, though less so than many others.

            "putting power solely in the hands of the wealthiest."

            Do you think it is? Then let some of the wealthiest try to obtain a permit in downtown SF for a mere block of flats, the likes of which used to be built by the thousands 100 years ago. If it takes less than a decade, I would be surprised.

            There is a lot of power outside the private sector. Every environmental or political group that sues any project does, in fact, wield a lot of power of the "veto" variety, which used to be prerogative of kings.

      • vrganj an hour ago

        People here strive to be the ones hiding in the bunkers as the world burns.

        • 1234letshaveatw 10 minutes ago

          Ban AC!

        • bell-cot 26 minutes ago

          Most humans would prefer hiding in a bunker to burning.

          And far better to be hiding, than watching and playing a fiddle from atop some convenient high wall. Or plotting how to destroy your fellow alpha arsonists next.

          • someonebaggy 19 minutes ago

            It would be even better if the world didn't burn.

      • Leonard_of_Q 40 minutes ago

        Yeah, sure, capitalism, 1%, etc. Spoken like a 15yo who just saw some DSA- agitprop on TikTok and is now ready to solve the world's problems.

        • buellerbueller 11 minutes ago

          Solving the world's problems is certainly a more laudable goal than the accumulation of wealth, don't you think?

          • inglor_cz a few seconds ago

            Cannot judge this before knowing what world's problems is that particular person intending to solve.

            There are people who fervently believe that the world's problems are caused by something like international Jewry or lack of sufficient religiosity or existence of democracy. I fervently hope that they don't get to succeed in their solutions.

        • sevenzero 37 minutes ago

          Just proves my point :)

      • ajkjk an hour ago

        people are very fond of it here -> there's no point arguing against it here?

        Backwards logic. If they're fond of it then they're the people to be arguing against, no?

        • sevenzero 38 minutes ago

          Resource exploitation and destruction of ecosystems are direct results of capitalism and greed and neglect. I stopped bringing up arguments against capitalism on here generally due to the sheer amount of people in privileged circumstances that wouldn't change a thing about their ways. Also doesn't help that people in tech often times have no sense of empathy whatsoever, so its no use to argue about this on here.

          • jdross 34 minutes ago

            Socialist Russia was an environmental disaster. https://www.gchumanrights.org/preparedness/the-environmental...

            • ImPostingOnHN a few seconds ago

              Weird, the thing in common between the two seems to be rich oligarchs controlling government and using it for personal profit and power.

              This line from your article stood out: "It was typical to use natural resources extensively without considering the effects on the environment."

              Crazy how much the right wing mirrors "Socialist Russia" sometimes.

            • someonebaggy 18 minutes ago

              There are many things that are not either capitalism or Russia.

              • buellerbueller 7 minutes ago

                The grandparent of your post, however, blamed capitalism for the destruction of the environment, as though other economic systems would not do the same. So your comment isn't really that relevant if the parent to your post is just offering a counterexample. I get it, you don't like capitalism, but jumping every time capitalism is mentioned--particularly when your point isn't really relevant--doesn't really win others to your side.

            • adrian_b 16 minutes ago

              The so-called socialist economies were just the extreme form of monopolistic capitalism.

              As a child, I experienced the reality of "socialism", where every word used by the ruling elites meant something very different from what it was claimed to mean.

              Unfortunately, already for more than a quarter of century USA and most "capitalistic" countries every year become more and more alike to the former socialist countries, from all points of view, like great wealth inequality, markets dominated by quasi-monopolies, non-existent political opposition, mass surveillance of the population, confusing propaganda in all mass-media, less and less chances to afford to truly be the owner of many kinds of things, like houses, cars or computers. If your car or your computer or your smartphone or your TV set do whatever their vendor or the government want, instead of doing what you want, then obviously you are not their owner.

              • theultdev 15 minutes ago

                fancy way of saying "communism has never been done properly before."

                yeah well that's because the execution matters and turns out when you give people power to choose who gets what, they abuse it. go figure.

            • sevenzero 26 minutes ago

              Yes yes socialism also made mistakes so capitalism must be better!!

              • theultdev 18 minutes ago

                so if it's socialism/communism destroying the environment it's a mistake. but if it's capitalism it's by design?

                nothing other than the prosperity that capitalism generates is inherently bad for the environment. yeah if you pull people out of poverty their carbon footprint will probably increase. but the alternative is them living in poverty and starving under a communist system (like always)

                the amount of goods and services capitalism has generated has saved so many lives. we have huge amounts of excess food we send across the world.

          • inkcapmushroom 25 minutes ago

            Those things have also happened under other forms of economic structure, such as feudalism and communism. In fact there's no point in human history when we weren't manipulating the environment for our gain, destroying some species and promoting others in the process, we just got better at it over time. It's sort of an inevitability given we are megafauna who take a lot of resources per human to live, and there are an awful lot of us.

            Rather than blaming "capitalism" as a whole, I would more put the blame on our ability to ignore negative externalities when pricing things in. That occurs just as much in any other economic system.

    • Leonard_of_Q 44 minutes ago

      Go forth, repent and flagellate yourself while we work at improving the future. Also, don't believe everything Greta & her ilk say. You may have noticed that she jumped off the climate train to hop on the gaza-boat? Perpetually unhappy people looking for a cause to keep their minds off their unbearable lack of a sense of purpose are not the ones you should seek out for counsel.

      In other words, why react in such a dour way to an interesting discovery?

      • bayindirh 38 minutes ago

        > In other words, why react in such a dour way to an interesting discovery?

        Because we're triggering mass extinction events in the name of improving things, that's why.

      • tclancy 16 minutes ago

        Oh no, she cares about two pressing issues at the same time! Clearly just a tourist.

      • beepbooptheory 21 minutes ago

        Certainly lots could be said here, but first and foremost its more than a little weird to be so fixated on that Greta girl like this.. You should really, like, work on making your point without bringing her up maybe? Maybe try writing two sentences not talking about her and go from there? I am not sure you appreciate how much it takes away from you point... Like, oh no, are you going to say something bad about Al Gore next? I will be devestated...

        While we are at it: whats with the antiquated parlance? Are we playing DnD right now?

        • 1234letshaveatw 8 minutes ago

          He should have sprinkled the word Nazi in a few times to modernize it

  • giwook 7 minutes ago

    Great news for mice everywhere.

  • lizardking 12 minutes ago

    Never been a better time to be a mouse

  • ballenf an hour ago

    I wonder if animals have always seen frogs as unpleasant medicine they need to eat occasionally. My dog would happily scarf them down if I let him. Or does it have to be IV administered?

    Also who thinks -- "hmm we've found a new random bacteria --- let's give a bunch of tumors to mice and then IV inject this random thing into them!"?

    There must have been something about the microbe that gave them a hint. Maybe it's in the cited original article and was left out of the blog post.

    • micromacrofoot 43 minutes ago

      > unpleasant

      > happily

      I think you answered your own question really, a lot of animals just enjoy eating them (humans included!)

    • psychoslave an hour ago

      Humans can go very far in exploring all kind of variation in whatever craze they get addicted to, all the more if they get all the room and resources to do so.

    • cyanydeez an hour ago

      maybe your dog is chasing a high from some rare toad mutation...

  • VMG an hour ago

    Crank blog, very skeptical

  • cedws 2 hours ago

    Bryan Johnson might be interested in IV’ing frog gut bacteria.

    • VladVladikoff an hour ago

      Is Bryan Johnson a mouse with cancer?

      • cedws an hour ago

        Not yet.

    • N_Lens an hour ago

      How rude! Bryan is no labrat /j

  • jimnotgym 2 hours ago

    100 years of trying everything to kill bacteria, and we find they can be jolly useful

    • gpderetta an hour ago

      humanity has been producing useful things from bacteria for thousands of things already.

  • GaProgMan an hour ago

    So the Bursar at Unseen University was on to something this whole time? And we all thought was mad!

  • oofbey an hour ago

    The blog is highly suspect, but the study is real. That said it’s not a big deal.

    Curing cancer in a mouse model is not at all uncommon in new therapies. Mouse models like this are vastly easier to treat than real world cancer for a bunch of reasons. Fully curing mice is the baseline for a treatment to even be considered for further evaluation. And even then very few therapies end up succeeding in humans - low single digit percent.

    So yes, another possible treatment. But not at all a breakthrough.

    • algoth1 an hour ago

      When my mother was fighting cancer, I recall the many disappointments of finding research shrinking tumours in animal models, only to find out the human research showing it didnt work in humans. This was in the 2010s, before llms, but when google search actually searched the web. Then, once you found something that seemed to work in humans, you were hit with the realization that ‘cancer’ is an umbrella term, and you need to account for cell type, and its numerous mutations.. I think the best approach is to collect a sample of the cancer, genotype it, test it against all known anticancer compounds, similar to how you’d deal with a bacterial infection sample, and then hope that the compound that worked for that specific cancer cell will work inside the human

  • tekacs an hour ago

    I'm astounded that this thread doesn't contain at least one 'eat the frog' joke.

    https://asana.com/resources/eat-the-frog

  • pennomi 2 hours ago

    The AI- generated diagram is plausible but horribly wrong the more you look at it. Thank goodness the original paper didn’t use that, it’s just this awful blog post that makes the research look like slop.

    • therobots927 2 hours ago

      AGI is clearly right around the corner. It might not be able to make an accurate diagram of a cancer research study but it’s gonna cure cancer in no time…

      • xingped an hour ago

        ~~I wouldn't be so sure about "clearly". We're still very squarely in the "fancy auto-complete" stage of "AI", the name of which I still consider more branding than reality.~~

        Edit: Ignore me, I'm sleepy and can't read, lol

        • hack1312 an hour ago

          The person you’re replying to was being glib

          • xingped 43 minutes ago

            Lol! Yep, that's my bad. Too sleepy right now.

        • TaupeRanger an hour ago

          How in the world did you miss such obvious sarcasm?

          • xingped 42 minutes ago

            Whoops, lack of sleep, haha.

  • BigTTYGothGF an hour ago

    Before anybody gets too excited they should check out some of the other reporting on that site, such as "COVID-19 Vaccine is the Culprit in Majority Found Dead after Injection" and "Trump Signed a Directive to Accelerate 6G Deployment to Operate "Implantable Technologies"

  • andrewstuart 32 minutes ago

    Mice are so goddam healthy.

    They get all the good medical breakthroughs.

    • bell-cot 22 minutes ago

      From what I've heard of murine health and life expectancy stats, all those "good medical breakthroughs" aren't actually doing them much good.

      Vs. there's a whole lotta of money to be made in mouse medicine.

      Symbolic, perhaps?

  • petesergeant an hour ago

    The blog articles (6 weeks old) describes this as new, but the linked paper is closer to 6 months old. Random report of the same bacteria giving a chemo patient sepsis: https://www.cureus.com/articles/342789-sepsis-caused-by-ewin... which seems unfortunate

    • degamad an hour ago

      Yep, I found that one too - this paper <https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12710904/> assumes immunocompetent mice, while the sepsis one was in a patient who was immunocompromised (both by the cancer and by chemo).

      Given that many cancer sufferers are immunocompromised, this isn't necessarily a silver bullet, although it is an interesting result.

  • jmorenoamor an hour ago

    Sorry but the site looks too sensationalist for me.

    Is there any other source?

  • tristanj 2 hours ago

    Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1217/

    • plasticeagle an hour ago

      The paper states that the results are in vivo, not in vitro. The bacteria seemed to literally have cured colorectal cancer in mice. Mice are apparently strikingly similar to human beings in ways that matter, and so this research is very encouraging.

      Likely too late for a particular person in my life, but hopefully not too late for others.

    • p0w3n3d 2 hours ago

      this one is in mice. I guess we're running in circles now.

    • boxed 2 hours ago

      Not really the same in this situation though.

      • drcongo an hour ago

        As in 99.9% of cases of people who rush to the comments desperate to post a link to xkcd because, erm, actually I dunno. Why the hell do half the threads on HN have someone desperately posting an unrelated xkcd?

        • hootz an hour ago

          It's our Nostradamus Prophecies, just like having an old Star Trek episode for everything that is happening today.

    • cheschire 2 hours ago

      Mice tumors, the scourge of humanity.

  • aa-jv 2 hours ago

    Wow, this is humorous .. whats next, the eye of the newt cures wistfulness? I sure hope so.

    Seriously though, we are living in an era where the more the science broadens its horizons, the more it just looks like plain ol' witchcraft.

    I'm hoping there'll be some uses for figs we haven't thought of, next ..

  • rimworld an hour ago

    lol