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King Tut’s Curse Could Cure Cancer
King Tut’s Curse Could Cure Cancer
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คำบรรยาย (208)
0:00
In the 1920s, researchers excavated the long-lost tomb
0:04
of the ancient pharaoh Tutankhamun.
0:06
Infamously, many members of the expedition met mysterious ends.
0:11
Their untimely deaths
0:12
after disturbing the resting place of a legendary pharaoh
0:15
have inspired fascination for over a century now,
0:19
and fueled speculation about a supernatural curse.
0:23
Some have speculated that the cause was not a curse,
0:26
but a fungus known to be deadly under the right circumstances.
0:31
But there’s a twist,
0:32
because this deadly fungus may just be due for a redemption arc.
0:38
[intro]
0:42
Sorry to disappoint you,
0:43
but there’s no actual curse on King Tut’s tomb that we know of.
0:47
The rumors of a curse started
0:49
because many of the people involved in the tomb excavation
0:52
met untimely ends.
0:54
Firstly, and most intriguingly,
0:56
the financial backer of the investigation, Lord Carnarvon,
1:00
died suddenly in 1923, jus t one year after the tomb was opened.
1:05
The specific yet distant relationship between the sponsor and the tomb opening
1:11
made it seem like Lord Carnarvon’s death
1:13
was a targeted smite from the pharaoh.
1:16
After that, several more members of the original expedition passed away as well,
1:21
all of which were attributed to divine retribution.
1:24
By 1930, ten people associated with the excavation of King Tut’s tomb had died.
1:30
Lord Carnarvon died of an infected mosquito bite,
1:33
one of the original excavators died by suicide,
1:37
another was smothered to death,
1:39
and an unrelated American investor visited the tomb and died of pneumonia.
1:44
It doesn’t really matter to the curse narrative
1:47
that some of the alleged curse effects didn’t result in death,
1:50
or that these events sometimes happened way after the tomb opening.
1:55
One of the original excavators allegedly was injured
1:57
in a vehicle crash 50 years later in 1970,
2:02
and even a friend of the lead archaeologist wasn’t spared:
2:06
He got a gift of a mummified hand in a paperweight,
2:09
and then his house burned down.
2:11
If any of my friends are watching this – that is a bad gift. No thank you!
2:16
Those misfortunes fueled feverish speculation by many,
2:20
including the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
2:23
The famed author of Sherlock Holmes was a big fan of the supernatural
2:27
and was quoted in an article substantiating the curse theory.
2:32
It’s a compelling story –
2:34
random Europeans disrupting an ancient Egyptian pharaoh's resting place
2:38
and getting smote by the wrath of the dead,
2:41
and perhaps the gods?
2:43
That’s cinema.
2:44
In a very Sherlock fashion, though,
2:46
the truth may be much less mystical in nature,
2:49
and more like “you missed this one critical detail that ties it all together.”
2:54
Or, at least some of it.
2:56
Scientists have checked out the tomb themselves
2:58
and found some species of a fungus called Aspergillus.
3:02
Aspergillus is a genus of fungus that causes the disease aspergillosis.
3:08
It’s quite a common fungus,
3:09
and you probably breathe some in every day with no problem.
3:13
But if you’re immunocompromised or breathing in a lot of it,
3:17
Aspergillus can move in and make you sick.
3:20
We’ve known about Aspergillus fungus for centuries,
3:23
but aspergillosis as a disease didn’t really get much medical attention until the 1980s.
3:30
So at the time of the King Tut tomb excavation,
3:33
doctors likely didn’t even know to look for it.
3:36
Any of the mysterious deaths that looked like pneumonia back then could,
3:40
in fact, have been aspergillosis.
3:43
While accurate death reports are a bit hard to trace,
3:46
especially with all that talk of a curse,
3:49
many of the King Tut curse deaths do seem to be attributed to pneumonia.
3:54
The other misfortunes are honestly probably curse-confirmation bias, to be honest
3:59
Now, this evidence is circumstantial,
4:02
and nobody has been able to sample Aspergillus flavus
4:05
directly from the bodies of the stricken explorers.
4:08
It’s reasonable speculation:
4:10
the fungus was found at the scene of the crime
4:12
and had plausible means of carrying out the murder.
4:16
But there is one more reason to point the finger at it.
4:19
A second series of tomb-related deaths added further evidence
4:23
to the fungus side of the debate.
4:25
In 1973, scientists opened the tomb of the Polish King Casimir IV,
4:31
who died in 1492.
4:33
Though the dozen scientists were all healthy before the excavation,
4:37
10 of them died shortly afterwards.
4:39
In the final count, as many as 15 people
4:42
who had either worked on-site at the Polish king’s tomb
4:45
or handled the artifacts from it fell sick and died.
4:49
Once again, a microbiologist went to the tomb years later
4:52
and identified the presence of Aspergillus flavus.
4:57
But, since these findings also came well after the deaths,
5:00
we still can’t say for sure that the people died of aspergillosis,
5:05
and not something else.
5:06
Plus, a lot of the people who died from the alleged “King Tut’s Curse”
5:10
clearly didn’t die of a fungal infection,
5:13
so Aspergillus is not a silver bullet explanation.
5:16
The lead archaeologist lived a full life into his 60s,
5:20
and you’d think he would be a prime target for a curse.
5:24
Neither Aspergillus nor a monarch’s wrath
5:27
can fully explain the series of unfortunate events.
5:30
Still, it’s compelling to establish that it’s possible
5:34
that if you go walking into a tomb that’s been sealed for a while and end up dead,
5:39
Aspergillus may be to blame.
5:41
And that’s enough for the fungus’s reputation to take a bit of a hit.
5:45
The fungus behind the mummy’s curse?
5:48
Nothing good can come of that!
5:51
…Or can it?
5:52
We’ll answer that question after this quick break!
5:56
Since you watch SciShow,
5:57
you’re no stranger to new ideas.
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Scientists are always searching for new compounds
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that can be used to cure diseases.
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And nature is a great place to look for ideas.
6:45
Lots of safe, useful drugs start out as or are inspired by natural products –
6:51
Ozempic, to name just one.
6:53
In addition, bacteria are constantly evolving resistance to our antibiotics,
6:58
meaning we have to stay on top of creating new ones.
7:01
So there are multiple reasons to keep digging into nature’s bag of tricks.
7:06
Researchers know that fungi especially
7:08
are weird little treasure troves of exciting compounds
7:12
that could potentially be used to find new drug options.
7:16
Fungi… including the one found in certain ancient monarchs’ tombs.
7:22
Aspergillus flavus is known to produce fun little molecules called RiPPs.
7:27
RiPP stands for ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptide.
7:34
And that is a lot of words,
7:36
but that name is basically just referring
7:38
to how these molecules are made.
7:40
RiPPs are special molecules that start out just like any other protein:
7:45
the ribosomes in a cell string together some amino acids.
7:49
That part's normal.
7:50
The next part isn’t.
7:52
RiPPs are different from any other protein because of how they are finished.
7:57
Once the peptide pops out of the ribosome, it goes through heavy modification
8:01
by a separate enzyme that can add all sorts of super complicated structures.
8:07
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania
8:10
became interested in RiPPs
8:12
because this extremely diverse set of complex structures
8:16
also gives them a diverse set of functions.
8:19
Among those functions are plenty that are known to act on human biology.
8:24
So the scientists decided to go digging for something useful.
8:28
Based on previously published literature,
8:30
the scientists at UPenn decided to comb through a few different Aspergillus species,
8:36
looking for one that would be a good candidate for finding new,
8:39
useful RiPPs.
8:40
Using genomic tools,
8:42
the researchers scanned for areas of the Aspergillus genomes
8:45
that might give rise to RiPPs.
8:47
Out of the twelve species they looked at,
8:50
Aspergillus flavus turned out to be one of the most promising.
8:54
When they looked deeper at the A. flavus genome,
8:57
the team found four genes
8:58
that were likely to code for a peptide that would turn into a RiPP.
9:03
The scientists took those four new RiPPs
9:05
and named them asperigimycins,
9:08
after the fungus they found them in.
9:10
Originally, the researchers were hoping to find new antimicrobials,
9:14
to help with that antibiotic resistance problem.
9:17
While unfortunately the asperigimycins didn’t show any antimicrobial activity,
9:22
they did show some anti-cancer activity.
9:26
Two of the four RiPPs had some anti-leukemia power, basically as-is.
9:31
When the scientists mixed those asperigimycins with leukemia cell lines,
9:35
the cancer cells stopped growing.
9:38
And another one of the RiPPs showed anti-leukemia activity
9:41
when mixed with a fatty molecule,
9:44
with comparable effectiveness in the lab
9:46
to FDA-approved chemotherapy drugs!
9:49
They needed to add that fatty component into the mix
9:52
to prevent the RiPP from getting trashed by the cell.
9:56
Without that, the asperigimycin couldn’t get into the proper part of the cell
10:00
to do its work as efficiently.
10:02
Interestingly, these asperigimycins seemed to be specific to stopping leukemia.
10:08
When the RiPPs were mixed with other types of cancer cells, nothing happened.
10:13
And that’s actually a good thing –
10:15
that means it can be a promising candidate
10:17
for developing future leukemia treatments.
10:20
You actually don’t want your chemotherapy
10:22
to have a ton of broad effects.
10:24
You want it to kill what you sent it in there to kill, and nothing else.
10:28
Figuring out why RiPPs work the way they do can be pretty difficult,
10:32
but the researchers think that they most likely flex their anti-cancer abilities
10:36
by preventing the cancer cells from dividing.
10:39
Still, this is the very early stages of this research,
10:43
and there are likely even more RiPPs yet to be discovered.
10:46
The anticancer properties of these RiPPs,
10:49
and their safety profile for humans,
10:51
still need to go through a ton of investigation
10:54
before they can make their way to real life patients.
10:57
At the end of the day,
10:58
connecting King Tut to this research team’s work
11:01
was probably mostly a stroke of genius
11:04
on the part of the university’s media team.
11:07
And we respect the hustle.
11:09
Still, it’s very cool that this deadly fungus,
11:12
maybe responsible for one of history’s most infamous curses,
11:16
could be entering its redemption arc.
11:18
It’s a reminder that the world is complicated
11:21
and sometimes the same thing can be both good and bad.
11:26
We’re excited to see what comes of the good.
11:29
[ OUTRO ]
