Seeds Of Life: Secrets Of The Soil

(CBS)  Matthew Murray and his family never imagined they'd find hope treating his bone cancer with a drug derived from dirt.

"This is your latest blood count and it just couldn't be better," Dr. Paul Richardson tells Murray.

Richardson, a doctor at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, is testing the remarkable anti-cancer properties found in soil bacteria. Combined with a more conventional drug, it's proving to boost the powers of both.

So despite weakened bones and fatigue, this combo-drug has freed him to do some heavy lifting -- he's even training for a triathlon.

"Every day, every week is an opportunity to just hang in there until the next drug comes," says Murray.

Scientists are looking for that next drug on the land and in the sea, reports CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller. Already, 60 percent of all cancer drugs come from some source of plant, fungus or living organism and the potential for even more is astronomical.

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Miller Blogs: Seeds Of Life In The Soil

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"Trillions of microbial species are out there," according to David Newman.

At the National Cancer Institute's repository in Maryland, Newman has spent a lifetime collecting and freezing some 80,000 organisms. He lends them to researchers across the globe in hopes they'll find a magic bullet.

"They could hold the secrets to a very large number of treatments to a very large number of diseases," he says.

At New York's Botanical Garden, Dennis Stevenson believes plants hold the secret of potential cures.

The prehistoric cycad, for example, has lived for millions of years despite the fact it injects a deadly toxin into its own system which should kill it.

"But it doesn't," Stevenson says. "So it has a genetic repair mechanism against a toxin or genetic prevention."

Plants and people share about 70 percent of the same genes. So if we can figure out how plants protect themselves, we may be able to use that knowledge to cure ourselves.

And that's exactly what Matthew Murray is hoping for: that Mother Nature's blueprint will give him a second chance at life.

[pattiwterry]

The cancer patient was reported as having bone cancer, and which was later identified as multiple myeloma. Actually multiple myeloma is a blood cancer. It is a cancer of the plasma cells which start to grow in the bone marrow which can cause erosion of the bone, and that is why some erroneously refer to it as bone cancer. Multiple myeloma has other effects on the body in addition to the bone lesions. It''s wonderful that new treatments are being studied for this disease and hopefully a cure will be in the near future!

[emma915]

The main reason for joining the fight to save the Rain Forests!

[alphaa10-2009]

This is one of the most fascinating stories CBS has published in the medicine/public health area. It does not take an NIH researcher to grasp how important the worldwide hunt for new genetic therapies has become.

Even the patent-obsessed pharmaceutical industry-- Big Pharma-- is trying to do an end run on further investment of billions in research by simply "discovering" (and patenting) processes already used by Nature.

In other words, pay an Amazon tribe pennies on the dollar for their folk remedies, and then charge the public billions for essentially the same product, but under its own patent and brand. There ought to be a law.

[lawyertom1]

Considering that bacteria make up about half of the biomass of the planet, it is not surprising at all that all types of interesting chemicals are to be found with unique properties. We are only just now scratching the surface of proteins and genes, and their component parts.