Bacteria & CANCER

In 1931, Cornell University pathologist Elise L'Esperance reported the presence of acid-fast, Tuberculosis-like organisms in Hodgkin's disease, French physician George Mazet implicated a bacterial association with leukemia and also Hodgkin's disease and a number of other physicians or scientists, including the German von Brehmer, the Irish physician W.M. Crofton and EJ Villesquez of France all reported similar cancer bacteria associations. In one case, an Italian scientist named Clara Fonti reportedly inoculated herself in the chest wall with a metastasizing mammary carcinoma and claimed to note neoplastic changes in her own tissues.

 

In some cases, claims were made that anti-sera derived from cancer associated bacteria could be used therapeutically. In 1953, for example, the results of an anti-bacterial vaccine trial involving 100 patients said to be diagnosed with different stages and types of cancer was reported by Dr. John E. White at the 6th International Congress of Microbiology in Rome, Italy. White said there were a number of favorable responses.

 

 

In 1950, a Newark based physician named Virginia Livingston published a paper claiming that a specific Mycobacterium was associated with neoplasia. Livingston believed that this organism was intermittently acid-fast, highly pleomorphic, and taxonomically related to the leprae and tuberculin bacilli. She, along with several colleagues including microbiologist Eleanor-Alexander Jackson, continued research throughout the 1950's and eventually proposed a name for the bacterium, calling it Progenitor Cryptocides. Livingston also proposed a treatment protocol based on anti-microbial vaccines similar in concept to Glover's which she reported on in a 1965 publication.

 

 

 I.C. Diller who had reported an increased "number of tumors" occurring in mice "injected with a bacterium" isolated from mice and human cancers, referred to several possible classifications. These included a Cornybacterium "of undetermined species", Staphylococcus epidermidis and an organism related only antigenically to Mycobacteria. She cited the "extreme pleomorphism" and "tendency to stabilize in forms that mimic other bacteria" as reasons for the difficulty in classification.

 The NCI studies produced various results. In one study, researchers concluded there was no statistically relevant oncogenic association between certain Mycoplasma species. In another, investigators concluded there was "an association between Mycoplasma and acute leukemia". Another NCI paper stated the "importance of (Mycoplasma/cancer) association(s)" because "latent mycoplasma were repeatedly isolated from mice under stress with malignant disease".

As of October 1986, however, the NCI's position was that its bacteria investigation failed to reach a definitive conclusion. NCI and other mainstream investigators---while questioning the actual role of cancer bacteria in oncogenesis---believed that such bacteria were common invaders of cancer tissues, acting more as parasites rather than involved in causality. Mycoplasma are known to be notorious contaminants of laboratory culture and other medium. Throughout the 1980's and up to the present time, the NCI has been actively involved in cancer virus research.

In 1974, Livingston reported an association between cancer-related bacteria and human choriogondatropin (HCG), a growth hormone commonly associated with pregnancy. Hernan Acevedo, a Pittsburgh-based scientist, also reported that HCG could be synthesized from cancer-related bacteria.

Livingston believed that HCG was a common denominator linking cancer and bacteria, and alleged that cancer tissues utilize HCG for the purpose of avoiding immunosurveilance, basing her ideas on data suggesting the human embryo uses HCG in the same fashion. In a later critique of Livingston's claims and methods, the NCI argued that "HCG is produced by a variety of bacteria from both cancer patients, and normal tissues".

  Acevedo reported in additional studies that "the synthesis and expression of hCG, its subunits, and its fragments, is a common biochemical denominator of cancer, providing the scientific basis for studies of its prevention and/or control by active and/or passive immunization against these sialoglycoproteins".

In 1990, the NCI published a review of Livingston's theories and said that her methods of classifying the cancer bacterium she referred to as "Progenitor cryptocides" had contained "some remarkable errors".Independent analysis of this organism using DNA-DNA hybridization technology revealed its actual classification as Staphylococcus epidermidis, not a Mycobacterium as Livingston had stated.

 

 

 Dr. Shyh-Ching Lo, a researcher with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C., published a paper titled "Mycoplasmas and oncogenesis: persistent infection and multistage malignant transformation". According to Lo, Mycoplasma fermentans and Mycoplasma penetrans induced malignant cell transformation in cultured mouse embryo cells, C3H/10T1/2 (C3H) after 6 serial passages lasting 1 wk per passage. He further wrote that up until the 11th passage, "malignant changes were reversible if mycoplasmas were eradicated by antibiotic treatment", but at 18 passages, "irreversible..transformation" occurred.

 

 

Subsequent to Lo's paper and as of 2007, there were a minimum of 14 published papers in the peer reviewed literature claiming to document an association between various species of Mycoplasma and various animal and human cancers.

 

Cancer Bacteria As Contaminants

 

Scientists have long suspected that cancer bacteria may be contaminants which infiltrate tissue cell cultures, or invade cancer tissues after the disease has started, as opposed to being a direct cause of cancer. Research is now under way in an effort to clarify this relationship.

 

In a recent study, investigators examined deep tissue specimens taken from patients with Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma. Using rRNA gene sequencing, and addressing the issue of contamination with sterilizing immersion techniques, the investigators noted a "diversity of bacterial taxa...including several putatively novel species." Some of the bacterial species were "isolated only from either the tumorous or nontumorous tissue" indicating "a degree of restriction." The investigators said that "Successful surface decontamination of the specimens indicates that the bacteria detected were from within the tissue".

 

 

Rather than finding one organism, the researchers noted a "diversity of bacterial groups" and concluded that the "significance of these bacteria within the tumor warrants further study". Alan Cantwell M.D. 80 😏