• A fungal fiend from ancient graves may have turned out to be an excellent treatment for cancer.

Archeologists pry open the long-forgotten tomb of an Egyptian Pharaoh, quickly distributing its contents and the Pharaoh’s mummy to museums around the world. Shortly thereafter, however, the intruders start dropping dead one by one from a mysterious disease.

The Pharaoh’s curse has struck!

It sounds like the plot of a B-class horror movie, but this has actually happened. Several of the archeologists who discovered King Tut’s tomb died inexplicably, and the same thing has happened in many other cases of opening ancient graves.

However, the killer isn’t a horrible hex laid down millennia ago. Instead, it’s a funky, fatal fungus.

Known as tomb mold, this fungus causes serious health issues in infected people and may have been behind several, if not most stories of old kings’ curses.

Now, however, new research has found that the Pharaoh’s curse may actually be a blessing in disguise. Due to its infectious nature, the fungus is very good at infecting and killing off certain cancer cells, with promising results for future healthcare.

What’s the Curse?

If you haven’t heard about it, let’s quickly go over what King Tut’s curse is. Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered in 1922 by a mostly English team of archeologists and financiers.

Having been missing for millennia, the tomb’s discovery was a worldwide sensation. In mere months, however, the excitement turned to terror.

The first to die was the expedition’s financier George Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon. He died of an uncontrollable infection in March 1923.

In the following May, George Jay Gould, another financier who had visited the tomb died of a mysterious fever. Then, in 1924, archeologist Arthur Mace, who had been part of the King Tut team, caught a lung infection and died in poor health four years later.

The yellow press of the time quickly started pushing a story of an ancient curse that was killing off those who had dared disturb the Pharaoh’s rest. It sounds sensational, but similar strange disease outbreaks have come in the wake of several other tomb openings as well.

The most significant of them is the opening of the crypt of Polish King Casimir IV in the 1970s. Out of the 12 archeologists who excavated the tomb, 10 were dead within a few weeks.

The Fungus Behind the Curse

Although an ancient king’s curse makes for a good story, the reality is more mundane, if not any less horrifying. Instead of evil magic, most of the deaths were likely caused by Aspergillus flavus.

Also known as the tomb mold or tomb fungus, A. flavus prefers to infect agricultural products, like grains, legumes, and nuts. However, if it’s consumed or its spores are inhaled, the fungus is more than capable of surviving and spreading in the human body.

Not only is the fungus itself harmful, but it also produces poisonous and carcinogenic chemicals known as aflatoxins. They cause hepatitis, suppress the body’s immune response, and may even lead to cancer.

What’s more, A. flavus spores can survive in a dehydrated state for hundreds of years if not longer. So, after getting in, they’re ideally prepared to sit in the darkness of an ancient tomb, waiting for a hapless archeologist to take a good whiff of old, spore-laden air.

In the case of Casimir IV’s tomb, investigators found A. flavus in the tomb and in the tissues of some of the dead archeologists. Although it hasn’t been conclusively proven, the fungus may have also been behind at least some of the deaths associated with King Tut’s tomb.

RiPPing a Cure from a Curse

Now, however, a new study suggests that the Pharaoh’s curse may be a blessing. Well, not for the dead archeologists, but at least for leukemia patients.

A part of why A. flavus is so deadly is that it produces chemicals called ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides, or RiPPs. Translated from nerdish to English, RiPPs are compounds with a specific shape that allows them to interact with tissues and biologically systems very effectively.

Ironically, two of the RiPPs spewed forth by the cancer-inducing fungus have turned out to be very effective in combating leukemia, or blood cancer. For some reason, these RiPPs target leukemia cells specifically, leaving other types of cells alone.

Once inside the cancer cell, the toxic fungus chemicals stop it from dividing. Essentially, they stop the cancer from spreading without causing any harm to other tissues, unlike chemotherapy or radiation treatment, for example.

Additionally, the researchers were able to attach fat molecules extracted from royal jelly (the high-nutrient goo queen bees feast on) to them. Thus lubed, the RiPPs can slip into cancer cells even more effectively.

Unfortunately, RiPPS are difficult to produce artificially in a lab setting. Whether they can actually effectively treat cancer on a larger scale is also still unknown.

Still, if nothing else, doctors can learn new ways of administering cancer drugs from the fungus. The thing that killed intruding archeologists may, in the long run, save many lives.

So, thanks for the curse, King Tut. Sorry about the grave robbery and all that.