New UF center focuses on inflammation and disease

Mansour Mohamadzadeh, Ph.D., and researchers have developed a mutant form of bacteria that, when administered orally to mice, reversed ulcerative colitis and even full blown colon cancer. The bacteria, L. acidophilus, normally plays a beneficial pro-biotic role in both animal and human digestive tracts, but when researchers tweaked certain genes and introduced the mutant bacteria to the diseased large intestines of mice, its presence hit the autoimmune system’s reset button to halt abnormal inflammation, dramatically reduce the number of precancerous polyps and even reverse progression of cancerous lesions. This finding has life-saving implications for the tens of thousands of Americans diagnosed each year with colon cancer, the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. It also has applications for the treatment of other autoimmune conditions, including HIV, Sjögrens disease, and diabetes.