Originally published August 15 2005
Scientists attempt to turn bacteria into cures
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Scientists have found that most drug remedies don’t work because your body neutralizes their effects, but treatments can be developed using a person's own bacteria.
The dirty secret of pharmacology is that most medicines don't work all that well.
Stomach acids erode them, the liver filters them out, and the bloodstream shunts them away.
But bacteria have a knack for evading these roadblocks, so researchers are now looking to use the little critters to make drugs inside your body or nudge your immune system.
Biotechnologists can delete toxic bacterial genes, insert genes for human proteins, and turn inert molecules into therapeutics.
Then the bacteria can travel to where they'll do the most good and manufacture medicine on site.
Mind you, Dr. Bug could still go awry - cause an infection, recover a deleted gene, spew out the right drug in the wrong place.
Don't expect a prescription for a few years, but some promising research projects are well under way.
Cancer Tracker Because cancer is basically the body's own good cells gone bad, the immune system rarely notices or attacks them.
Stripping the bacteria of toxic genes and substituting ones that make molecules found in tumors may retrain the immune system to go after cancerous cells.
The experimental protein drug Interleukin-10 quiets the immune system but misbehaves when injected or ingested.
Bacteria: Lactococcus lactis is the bacteria used to ferment milk to make cheese.
Tweak it to make IL-10, and the bug passes through the stomach and makes medicine at the intestinal wall.
Chemo Maker Chemotherapy destroys healthy cells almost as well as it does tumors.
The ideal dose is too weak to harm patients but strong enough to beat up a malignancy.
By adding a gene that converts a relatively innocuous chemical called a prodrug into a toxin, it can be used to fight cancer.
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