KATHLEEN KOKOLUS AND ELIZABETH REPASKYMice housed in laboratories beneath their natural body temperature of 30°C or 31°C are less able to fend off tumors than animals kept in warmer rooms. Roswell Park Cancer Institute’s Elizabeth Repasky and her colleagues found that compared with their counterparts housed at a comfortable temperature for humans—between 20°C and 26°C—mice injected with tumor cells and kept at 30°C to 31°C showed reduced tumor formation and metastasis, effects mediated by the adaptive immune system. Their work was published this week (November 18) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“It’s one of the things that’s under everybody’s nose, and nobody really thought about it much,” Duke University’s Mark Dewhirst, who was not involved in the work, told The Scientist. “Everybody thought that mice would be fine at room temperature, but nobody ever thought to look.”
WIKIMEDIA, NCIBacteria lining the guts of mice help animals being treated for cancerous tumors by triggering inflammatory and immune system responses. Germ-free or antibiotic-treated mice fared worse than their microbe-laden counterparts, according to two independent studies out this week (November 21) in Science, led by researchers at INSERM in France and the National Cancer Institute.
“Most of the time we think about the gut microbiome shaping the local environment. Now these papers are breaking the glass ceiling and going into extra-intestinal organs . . . and influencing activities of drugs,” said Christian Jobin from the University of Florida, who reviewed both studies but was not involved in either.
“Both ...
