Caves key to fighting superbugs

Horizon: Defeating the Superbugs

This complex structure make them almost impossible for chemists to design or synthesize, which is why we often turn to nature for their discovery.

Of the myriad of antibiotics that have come on the market over the last 60 years, 99% are derived from other microorganisms, primarily bacteria and fungi in the soil.

But this source of compounds is starting to run out and we must turn our attention to more exotic and extreme environments.

Caves are isolated environments, formed by water eroding rock over millions of years. In such isolation, without the input of sunlight or nutrients from the surface, microorganisms have had to adapt to a life of perpetual famine.

Through my work in caves, I have learnt that such microbes are so well adapted to starvation, that regular laboratory growth conditions are too rich.

With many of these microorganisms trapped in an unending search for food, they are unable to turn off their scavenging systems, and stuff themselves to the point of death.

Others are so adept at making a living from what little energy is available that they can survive by eating the plasticizers that leach out of plastics in our laboratory dishes.

Some cheat, learning to hunt down and prey upon other bacteria to obtain the resources they need to survive. Of the over 4,000 bacterial species we have grown from cave environments - 1,000 of which are new species - most behave unlike their surface counterparts.

Fighting big 'C'

T-cells attacking a tumour Imagine a day when doctors are able to train a patient's blood cells to fight cancer.

They take some blood, extract the white blood cells, then coax them in the laboratory to memorise the cells that cause cancer.

When injected back into the body, the memory T-cells go on to hunt and destroy tumour cells for more than a year.

For a handful of patients around the world - such a treatment has already become a reality. The hope is that in five to ten years' time, this highly experimental therapy could make the leap to approved drug.

This week, US scientists reported their results on nine patients with one of the deadliest forms of cancer.

All had advanced melanoma that had spread from the skin to other parts of the body.

End QuoteDr Marcus ButlerDana-Farber Cancer Institute Melanoma can usually be cured if detected and removed early.

But once they have spread around the body, most patients survive for less than a year.

The experimental therapy using "killer" T-cells did not stop the cancer progressing in most of the nine patients studied.

But in one, his cancers shrank and after two years they cannot be seen on scans.

These are very early days. As the researchers - led by Dr Marcus Butler of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute - point out, this is a phase I trial, and will need to be investigated in far larger numbers of patients.

But it offers a glimpse of what experimental treatments like these might one day offer cancer patients.

Dr Butler told the BBC: "Cancer-killing T-cells trained in the lab can induce long-lasting anti-cancer effects.

"The dream would be that we could make a library of killer T-cells that we could generate quickly for patients."

Immunotherapy

The approach - known as adoptive T-cell therapy - has only been studied in a few hundred patients around the world.

Continue reading the main storyMELANOMA The most serious form of skin cancer Sun exposure is the main - and most preventable - risk factor, causing genetic damage to the skin Around one third of melanomas develop from normal moles The rest develop on areas of previously normal skin Warning signs include: Two halves of a mole do not look the same The edges of the mole are irregular, blurred or jagged Colour is uneven, with more than one shade Mole is wider than 6mm One obstacle is that the cells tend to disappear quickly when injected into cancer patients.

But the Dana-Farber research, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine , shows that the cells' life can be extended by priming them in the lab with an artificial version of cells found naturally in the immune system.

These cells inform the body's immune system that cancer is present and needs to be destroyed.

Co-author, Dr Naoto Hirano, says the next step is to study this technique in conjunction with other therapies that can boost the numbers and effectiveness of the T-cells.

He added: "We will be beginning a series of clinical trials to learn which combinations work best in which patients."

Dr Laura Bell, senior science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said the work is one of a large number of immunotherapy treatments now entering clinical trials.

"Immunotherapy is an exciting area of cancer research, designed to harness the power of the body's own immune system to fight cancer," she said.

"The results of laboratory research in this area are now starting to feed through into the clinic and we'll be following the progress of these trials with interest."

More on This Story Related Internet links Science Translational Medicine Dana-Farber Cancer Institute The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites

The Carbon Ranch: Fighting Climate Change One Acre at a Time

If you are concerned about climate change - and you should be - then these are not the best of times. The decision by the U.S. Senate to postpone climate legislation, perhaps indefinitely, coupled with the failure of the United Nations summit in Copenhagen last winter to produce an international treaty limiting greenhouse gases means Business-as-Usual continues to rule.

Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has risen to 391 parts-per-million (ppm) - 40 ppm above what many scientists consider a level necessary to keep the planet from becoming ice-free. And it's rising at a rate of 2 ppm per year, far faster than at any time in the Earth's paleoclimate record.

What to do? Some see salvation in high technology, including the 'capture' of CO2 at its source, to be stored underground, or the 'scrubbing' of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere by hundred of thousands of boxcar-sized filtering machines. The trouble is, these technologies, even if practical, are years away from deployment. And the climate crisis, as evidenced by recent headlines, is happening now.

Which leads to an idea: what about low technology? As I see it, the only possibility of large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is through plant photosynthesis and related land-based carbon sequestration activities.

There are only four natural sinks for CO2: the atmosphere, the oceans, forests and other perennial vegetation, and the soil. The atmospheric sink is overflowing with CO2, as we well know, and the oceans are fast filling up (and becoming alarmingly acidic as a result). Forests have a habit of being cut down, burned up, or die and decompose over time, all of which release stored CO2 back into the atmosphere. That leaves soils.

The potential for CO2 storage in soils is three times greater than the atmosphere. And since two-thirds of the Earth's landmass is covered with grass, the potential impact on the climate could be gigantic. In fact, NASA's Dr. James Hansen, the nation's leading climatologist, postulates that 50 ppm of CO2 could be sequestered in soils over the next fifty years.

How? By employing the low technology of green plants, which pull CO2 out of the air and fix it into carbon compounds that are stored in the soil.

In my experience in the arid Southwest, there are six strategies that can increase or maintain the carbon content of grass-dominated ecosystems. They include: (1) planned grazing systems using livestock, especially on degraded soils; (2) active restoration of degraded riparian and wetland zones; and (3) removal of woody vegetation, where appropriate, so grass may grow in its stead. Maintenance strategies include: (4) the conservation of open space, so there is no further loss of carbon-storing soils; (5) the implementation of organic no-till farming practices; and (6) management of land for long-term ecological and economic resilience.

Fortunately, a great deal of the land management 'toolbox' required to implement these strategies has largely been tried-and-tested by practitioners and landowners. Over the past decade, these strategies have been demonstrated individually to be both practical and profitable.