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posted by mrpg on Monday October 03 2022, @04:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the fungal-metropolis dept.

Fungi find their way into cancer tumors, but what they're doing there is a mystery

Together, the studies provide a "nice, rigorous association" between fungi and cancer, said Ami Bhatt, an associate professor of medicine and genetics at Stanford University who did not work on either paper. "It provides pretty compelling evidence there may be rare fungi within tumors," she said. But the work raises far more questions than it answers. "Are they alive or not? And assuming they really are there, then why are they there? And how did they get there?"

[...] But once the fungi are there, if indeed they are alive and doing stuff, then what exactly are they doing? The experiments done thus far don't probe whether fungi in cancer are merely opportunistic bystanders or if they might be accomplices in cancer. "We don't have the experiments to present a causal link between tumor initiation or progression and fungi," she said. "But this really encourages future research to think about designing experiments with microbiome and mycobiome investigations in mind."

[...] Or, since the fungi rarely exist in the body without bacterial neighbors, perhaps there are interactions between fungi, bacteria, and the human body that drive cancer outcomes. "Fungi can be food for bacteria and vice versa," Livyatan said. "They can even live within bacteria or bacteria can live within fungi. They can do a lot of biochemistry. Any of those avenues might have an effect."


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 03 2022, @07:08PM (4 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday October 03 2022, @07:08PM (#1274746)

    Even if they're just taking up space / nutrients, they're doing something within the tumors.

    Thing is: you have millions of micro-tumors (small groups of cancerous cells, not yet formed into a pathological tumor) throughout your body, so the fungi aren't likely present when they first form, because they're flipping everywhere, all the time. It's when they get established and start growing faster than they are dying that they become problematic.

    Grow on, tumor fungi, we shall watch your career with great interest.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday October 03 2022, @07:49PM (1 child)

      by RS3 (6367) on Monday October 03 2022, @07:49PM (#1274750)

      I'm wondering what the immune system's involvement is. Many fungi cause immune response, sometimes severe, from histamine symptoms (inflammation, runny nose, etc.) to full-on autoimmune and paraneoplastic problems. How do the fungi get past the immune system? Maybe the fungi protect the tumor from immune system?

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 03 2022, @07:57PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday October 03 2022, @07:57PM (#1274752)

        It's too early to tell, and I'm definitely waiting for a confirmation study or three before I'm convinced that this one wasn't just lab error, but FFS, how many TRILLIONS have we spent on oncology research and care in the last 50 years alone? And they're just finding this now? And if it turns out to be a pivotal element in the treatment and remission of even 5% of lethal cancer cases???

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 03 2022, @10:00PM (1 child)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 03 2022, @10:00PM (#1274775) Journal

      they're doing something within the tumors.

      That hasn't been established. Not yet, anyway.

      “Or maybe there are immune cells that ate fungi and carried sequences to a tumor site,” she said.

      Your immune system is fighting multiple attacks, with the cancer being the most serious of attacks. It's quite possible that debris from other minor battles are carried to the serious battle against the cancer. Maybe we should wait for more research before drawing any conclusions.

      Another idea crosses my mind: how certain are they that the fungi grew in those samples before the death of the patient? We already know that hospitals play host to a lot of bad things. Hospitals probably host fungi, along with other super bugs and whatnot. So, you remove a tumor, and some spores land on it while you're working with it. Those samples with the most spores would then indicate the hospitals that host the most fungi within their walls, ceilings, floors, broom closets, etc. Nothing in the article indicates that the fungi grew inside the patient before the patient died. They have simply identified the genome for the fungi in their samples.

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 04 2022, @01:06AM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday October 04 2022, @01:06AM (#1274797)

        >with the cancer being the most serious

        That is far from always the case. Most men over 70 die with prostate cancer, not of prostate cancer. Similarly, the morgues are full of old people who didn't die of the multiple tumors they have.

        >we should wait for more research before drawing any conclusions.

        Absolutely, but even if the fungi are not metabolizing, they are still having some effects. If nothing else they might provide a delivery vector for more targeted chemo or even radiotherapy.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2022, @09:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2022, @09:08PM (#1274761)

    With fungus able to communicate [soylentnews.org] and control minds [soylentnews.org], I'm not sure who is at the top [soylentnews.org] of the species list here on this planet.

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