Clostridium difficile can cause devastating inflammatory gastrointestinal infections, with much of the damage inflicted by a toxin the bug produces. But research from Boston Children’s Hospital suggests that the same toxin could also be a useful tool for curbing highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancers that don’t respond to chemotherapy.
Min Dong, PhD, in the Department of Urology at Boston Children’s, is an expert on toxins produced by bacteria, including C. difficile’s toxin B. In 2016, his lab showed that toxin B gains entry into cells via a receptor known as Frizzled. Then, in 2018, the lab showed that when a fragment of toxin B binds to Frizzled, it prevents a molecule called Wnt from engaging with the Frizzled receptor — blocking Wnt signaling, which many cancers rely on for growth.
