On Thursday, a new mechanism of carcinogenesis was presented, discovered by members of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Split and published in Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world.

Janos Terzic, the project leader and head of the Laboratory for Cancer Research at the Split Faculty of Medicine, said the discovery describes a new mechanism of carcinogenesis in which intestinal bacteria convert one chemical into a more dangerous one that accumulates in the tissues of the bladder and causes cancer. He noted that the discovery could have clinical implications.

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

People could get tested to know the risk

Thank you to this discovery, people could undergo tests in the future to find out about the risk, while the bacteria would be eliminated with antibiotics or similar methods to reduce the risk of cancer, Terzic said, adding that the dangerous chemicals, called nitrosamines, are found in tobacco smoke and preserved foods.

“Once they enter our bodies and cells, they damage DNA and cause gene mutations, which is one of the main elements of carcinogenesis,” Terzic said.

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

The Vice Chancellor for Science and Quality at the University of Split, Igor Jerkovic, said that the discovery was a great success and one of the best gifts for the University of Split on its 50th anniversary. The University of Split published its first paper in scientific journals in 1979 and reached the world average in this regard in 2009, he said, noting that in the last five years, half of the papers produced have been published in the best journals in the world.

The Split University research paper states that bladder cancer is the tenth most common type of cancer and that it is often linked to chemicals such as those in tobacco smoke.