Gut bacteria from amphibians and reptiles achieve tumor elimination in mice

Mouse-only results and headline framing

• Many comments stress that this is a murine study; readers should assume “in mice” for cancer breakthroughs unless explicitly “in humans.”
• Several argue HN titles should always mark “in mice” to temper hype, since most such findings fail in human trials.
• Others counter that mouse work is a normal, necessary step toward human trials and not newsworthy by itself.

How promising is this specific result?

• Some are stunned by reported 100% response with no side effects and ask for the “catch.”
• Domain commenters note that thousands of animal-model therapies look great but almost none reach clinic; even fewer with such clean early data succeed.
• One expert calls the work “bullshit” and a “nothing burger” until at least phase II/III data exist, pointing out that mouse tumors and human tumors differ substantially.

Drug development pipeline & economics

• Discussion of “good” vs “bad” reasons a therapy never reaches market:
  • Good: it doesn’t work, is too toxic, hard to deliver, or treats too few people to justify massive trial costs.
  • Bad: poor ROI for impoverished patient populations; cannibalizing profitable legacy drugs; structural disincentives for clinicians to adopt better devices.
• Some dispute that lack of patentability truly blocks commercialization, citing repurposed generics at high prices.

Cancer biology: repair vs immune layers (L1 vs L2)

• A long subthread discusses why research focuses on immune modulation and tumor kill (L2) rather than perfecting DNA repair (L1).
• Points raised: replication and repair are already extremely accurate; cancer usually involves multiple defects in safeguards; correcting mutations in vivo is technically and conceptually much harder than killing aberrant cells.
• Elephants/whales and mutation–evolution tradeoffs are mentioned; improving immune surveillance and stem-cell replenishment is seen as more tractable.

Mechanism and specificity of the bacteria

• Commenters like the conceptual beauty: anaerobic bacteria preferentially grow in hypoxic, immunosuppressed, leaky, metabolically abnormal tumor environments and are cleared from normal tissues.
• Even skeptics concede that a robust method to deliver self-replicating agents specifically into tumors would be notable, regardless of direct killing.

Skepticism about the paper and model

• Some note tiny sample sizes (n=3 and n=5), concerns about inconsistencies in reported n, and choice of PD‑L1 antibody in a model known to respond poorly to it.
• Others see this as an early proof-of-concept: interesting biologically, but far from clinical relevance.

Perception of cancer “breakthroughs”

• Several express fatigue that media-celebrated breakthroughs rarely change the visible frontline of chemo/radiation for patients.
• Others counter that many quiet, incremental gains (including immunotherapies and radioligand therapies) have substantially improved survival, even if they don’t make splashy headlines.