ZAGREB, 1 Aug (Hina) – A new mechanism of carcinogenesis, discovered by members of the Split Faculty of Medicine and published in Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals, was presented on Thursday.

Janoš Terzić, who was the project leader and who heads the Split Faculty of Medicine Laboratory for Cancer Research, said the discovery describes a new mechanism of cancer formation, with intestinal bacteria turning a chemical into a more dangerous one that accumulates in the tissue of the bladder and induces cancer. He noted that the discovery could have clinical implications.

“This is a new mechanism… and that is why our discovery was probably interesting and published in the world’s leading scientific journal. Our discovery could be applied, and this yet to be confirmed by further studies, because we have discovered that different people have different quantities of the bacteria that convert the chemical into a more dangerous one,” Terzić said, adding that people differ in terms of the potential for the transformation of the said chemical.

People could undergo testing to learn about risk

Thanks to this discovery people could in future undergo tests to learn about the risk while bacteria would be eliminated with antibiotics or similar methods to reduce the cancer risk, Terzić said, adding that the dangerous chemicals, called nitrosamines, are present in tobacco smoke and preserved foods.

“Once they enter out body and cells, they damage DNA and cause gene mutations, which is one of the main elements of carcinogenesis,” Terzić said.

The future of the discovery will depend on what other researchers in the world will do. People should be compared based on the potential for the conversion of the chemical to see in which groups the cancer is more present, Terzić said.

The vice-chancellor for science and quality of Split University, Igor Jerković, said the discovery was a great success and one of the best gifts to Split University for its 50th anniversary. Split University published its first work in scientific journals in 1979, and in 2009 it reached the global average in that regard, he said, noting that in the past five years half the papers produced were published in the best world journals.

The Split University research paper says that bladder cancer is the tenth most frequent cancer, and that it is often associated with chemicals like those present in tobacco smoke.