Salmonella to the rescue

Researchers have been working on using salmonella to fight human cancers for over ten years. Sounds crazy, but salmonella are hungry bacteria, and apparently tumors are great sources of food. And while chemotherapy and radiation both work well against actively dividing cells, they are less effective against non-dividing cells. The goal of this research is to pair salmonella with standard cancer therapies to kill both types of cancer cells.

The bacteria are engineered to specifically target tumor cells and are weakened so that the immune system can fight them off before they cause illness.

Here's the latest story as well as one from ten years ago.