You’d be amazed how often I am similarly confounded.
The #1 chemo treatment for post resection bladder cancer is Bacillus Calmette Guerin (BCG). It is made with inert tuberculosis culture which is inserted into the bladder over many weeks in liquid form. Burns like a mofo.
I try to imagine a research scientist thinking—hmmmm. Let’s try inserting inert tuberculosis into the bladder to kill cancer cells.
How does this happen?
@LnzyHou @grayman some treatments and vaccines hijack existing biological processes. The natural process being like a lock & key, the treatment/prophylactic (like a vaccine) being a skeleton key.
Tuberculosis can express itself in the urinary system so it may be researchers knowing that, isolate the mechanism for the spread and seek a skeleton key for that.
Adeno viruses spread easily. Deactivated/inert versions are used as the skeleton key to introduce the immune system to a specific virus.
@CanisPundit @grayman
OMG—not even my urologists have been able to explain this to me. Friends thought my young black St Croix urologist was a voodoo doctor.
When I called Mayo Clinic Urology Department they said BCG was their go-to treatment for early stage, non-invasive bladder cancer.
So much for voodoo.
Thank you. You’ve made a medical enigma understandable.
#healthcare