Cancer’s bad taste coup

Food poison find leaves sweet taste in mouth

A SEEMINGLY innocent food poisoning study may have led Griffith University scientists to the discovery of an improved way of detecting cancer.

The study into food poisoning bacteria E. coli resulted in the identification of a naturally occurring toxin, which scientists have since engineered to make entirely specific to detecting a tumour antigen (substance) made by a wide range of cancers including breast and ovarian.

Professor Michael Jennings, from Griffith University’s Institute for Glycomics, said the potential discovery was due to his team’s multipronged approach to research.

“There’s a saying in science that chance favours the prepared mind and because at the institute we work with both infectious diseases and cancer research, there was a crossfertilisation of ideas and opportunity,” he said. “The real innovation here is we have converted something that was discovered in an infectious disease research program into food poisoning and were able to utilise it as a tool for potentially detecting tumour antigens.”

Prof Jennings said the naturally occurring toxin produced by E. coli binds to an unusual sugar expressed at very high levels on cancer cells.

The discovery of the sugar in the human body indicates the patient may be suffering cancer, hence the research team’s efforts to redesign the toxin that detects it.

“We were very surprised at how well the engineering of this protein worked. We were able to remove the binding characteristics that were useless in a diagnostic sense and re-engineer it to make it totally specific for the tumour antigen target.”

Prof Jennings said more research had to be done but the tool had the potential to “far more sensitively” detect a wide range of possible cancers.

The team from Griffith worked in collaboration with scientists from University of Adelaide and University of Queensland, with their findings detailed in Scientific Reports.