Word: bacterium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...tools of molecular biology, researchers like Russell are disguising and manipulating common microbes so that they will do good instead of harm. After all, nothing is better than a virus at evading the body's immune defenses and breaking into a cell. And nothing is better than a bacterium at producing deadly toxins that destroy a cell from the inside. "We can make a good anticancer agent," says Russell, "by harnessing and channeling these destructive powers...
...horses that can sneak into tumor cells and destroy them from within. "There is a good probability that microbe approaches will be part of the arsenal of the future," says Kenneth Kinzler, a cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins Hospital's Kimmel Cancer Center who is working with the clostridium bacterium. "We're betting...
Meanwhile, scientists at Vion Pharmaceuticals in New Haven, Conn., have been experimenting with another bacterium, salmonella, and another way of destroying a tumor from the inside out. Salmonella is a familiar but unwelcome interloper in kitchens and at picnics, thriving in uncooked meats and other food products such as eggs. Once in the blood, its surface coat can trigger septic shock, a hyperaggressive immune response that can lead to liver and kidney failure and a dangerous drop in blood pressure. Confined to a tumor, however, the bacterium could be a potent cancer killer. Like the measles virus, salmonella zeroes...
...need all those microbes if the bad-bug approach turns out to be as successful as early trials suggest. Like AIDS cocktails and cancer chemotherapies, microbe-based therapies may require a multidrug approach. For example, combining the modified clostridium bacterium, which attacks a tumor at its anaerobic core, with the altered measles virus, which destroys the periphery of the tumor, could be a potent new way to fight cancer. Add some radiation or chemotherapy to mop up any lingering cancer cells, and doctors could find themselves closing in on a cure...
Lyme disease is nothing to fool around with, especially for those in the groups at highest risk--children ages 5 to 14 and adults ages 50 to 59. Caused by a spirochete bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi that is transmitted via the bite of the so-called deer tick, the disease is usually accompanied by an expanding bull's-eye rash (at least 2 in. in diameter) at the site of the bite. Secondary symptoms may include muscle pain, headache and swollen glands. Left untreated, the bacterium can lodge in various body tissues (where blood tests may not detect...