Potential colon cancer cure: How real is it?

Claims for “super cures” often are so exaggerated or even downright bogus that they leave your head spinning.

Take this one, for example: Aussie cookbook author Belle Gibson recently claimed that she cured her brain cancer through nonmedical means – then admitted that she’d never even had cancer.

And a Food and Drug Administration crackdown on false autism treatments targeted useless clay baths and a “miracle” mineral supplement that actually triggers life-threatening low blood pressure and severe vomiting.

It’s always smart to have a wait-and-see attitude about unconventional health-bestowing claims: You avoid losing money and your health. But there’s a new mouse-tested treatment for colorectal cancer that claims a 100 percent cure rate – and it’s got us intrigued.

A study published in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine explains how researchers used radio-immunotherapy to target and kill off cancer cells without any negative side effects or damage to surrounding tissue. Researchers developed a three-step system that uses a radioactive antibody to target an antigen found on over 95 percent of primary and metastatic human colorectal cancers. The researchers now hope to set up a safe and effective human trial. If that turns out well, they say, the system also may be useful in snuffing out cancers of the breast, pancreas, lung, esophagus and skin (melanoma).

It’s designed as a “plug and play” system, which, they explain, “allows for the use of many fine antibodies targeting human tumor antigens and is applicable, in principle, to virtually all solid and liquid tumors in man.” Here’s hoping that’s one grand claim that turns out to be true!