Geoffrey Branger
modified to
07:30, October 06, 2022
Dogs are truly man’s best friend! A parasite present in our four-legged friend could open the way to treatments for cancers so far incurable such as, for example, cancers of the brain or pancreas, this is in any case what the researchers of the University of Tours who discovered the effects that this micro-organism could have on tumours. Today, the tests are still in their infancy, but the first results are very encouraging, as explained by Arthur Battistoni who is a doctoral student at the University of Tours and is part of the team of researchers responsible for this discovery.
Inhibition in a few weeks
“When we treated mice with this parasite, we were able to see in a few weeks an inhibition (to understand: a blocking, a stop) of the development of the tumor which is a very promising result for the future”, details-t -he. He adds: “We hope one day to be able to treat a first human patient with this therapy”.
Indeed, they are not yet at this stage, but the idea, in the long term, is to inject this parasite, which is harmless for humans, directly into a tumor several times. “It will allow both to destroy the tumor cells and to wake up the patient’s immune system, which is often put to sleep by the tumor”, continues the researcher. This virus would therefore act as a reactivator of our internal defense system, which is also the whole point of this study.
A major discovery
Using a treatment that intervenes on the immune system in medicine is called immunotherapy, in this case, cancer immunotherapy, and this method has a significant interest.
In addition to the extraordinary progress of this discovery for the fight against cancer, there would be no side effects, unlike current treatments, such as chemotherapy.
