Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DVuBYj2D6DD/

Scientists are developing bacteria that can actually eat cancerous tumors from the inside out, a futuristic approach that targets areas traditional therapies can’t reach. This development comes from bioengineeers at Canada’s University of Waterloo and is published in ACS Synthetic Biology.

Their approach utilizes an bioengineered Clostridium bacterium genetically modified to not only thrive inside oxygen-starved tumor centers but also in outer tumor layers where more oxygen is present. The modified bacterium only becomes able to live and proliferate where more oxygen is present after its numbers reach a given level. This prevents its dangerous spread throughout the body. These rapidly proliferating intratumor bacteria hog nutrients literally starving and killing the tumor.

The tumor-killing effectiveness of this system has only been demonstrated in laboratory animals. The next step are carefully-controlled clinical trials to demonstrate safety and effectiveness in humans.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssynbio.5c00628

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/02/260224023101.htm

#bacteria #cancer #clostridium

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DVuAhnLjW-p/

Cutting out sugar very early in life—even before birth—may lower risks of heart disease decades later. That’s the finding of a multicenter collaborative study published in British Medical Journal. The study used a unique “natural experiment” from postwar Britain to show that limiting sugar in the first 1,000 days of life is linked to significantly better cardiovascular health in adulthood.

The analysis included 63,433 participants from the UK Biobank. Of these, 40,063 were exposed to sugar rationing early in life, while 23,370 were not. Those without sugar from the womb through age two had markedly better outcomes: 20% lower overall cardiovascular disease risk, 25% lower heart attack risk, 26% lower heart failure risk, 24% lower atrial fibrillation risk, 31% lower stroke risk, and 27% lower risk of cardiovascular death.

This observational analysis suggests that good nutrition during gestation and early childhood has lifelong benefits for heart health. It strongly supports current guidance to limit added sugars for not only infants and toddlers but also for moms with their babies in utero.

https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj-2024-083890

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/02/260222092324.htm

#sugar #infants #toddler #cardiac

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DVt_oDBiVAO/

Adding a laser procedure dramatically improves the results of immunotherapy for one of the deadliest brain cancers. Neuro-oncologists at USC report this development in the journal Nature Communications.

In this Phase 1/2 clinical trial, 45 patients with recurrent astrocytoma were randomized to receive either laser interstitial thermal therapy (LITT) that destroys tumor tissue and opens the blood-brain barrier plus the immunotherapy with the drug pembrolizumab immunotherapy or standard care, surgery, followed by the immunotherapy.

The results are striking: nearly 50% of patients in the LITT group were alive at 18 months, compared with 0% in the standard-treatment group. In addition, more than one-third of LITT-treated patients survived beyond three years, compared to a typical 4–5 month survival seen with surgery and immunotherapy.

The addition of of LITT, adding laser therapy to immunotherapy, is a potential game-changing approach. These results are early and require confirmation in larger trials, they offer real hope in a disease with limited therapeutic options and generally poor outcomes.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69522-w

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20260226/Innovative-laser-procedure-offers-new-hope-for-recurrent-brain-tumors.aspx

#laser #immunotherapy #astrocytoma #cancer