"H.pylori infection is now accepted as a cause of stomach cancer, " he told BBC News Online.
Barry Marshall and Robin Warren discovered that H. pylori was the cause of stomach ulcers.
Research by NYU's Blaser hints that H. pylori may be helpful in warding off asthma.
But it turns out that having H. pylori inside you may not always be bad.
Some people with ITP are also infected with Helicobacter pylori, the same bacteria that cause most peptic ulcers.
The evidence that ulcers are triggered by a bug called Helicobacter pylori had been accumulating since the 1970s.
Five genes, for example, make proteins that help H. pylori to stick specifically to the cells of the stomach lining.
The scientists found that H.pylori lost its shape, became immobile and eventually died when it came into contact with this chemical.
Cancer Research UK is funding a large-scale trial to see if screening for H.pylori can identify those at risk of developing cancer.
About a third of this group carry the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, which makes stomach bleeds three times more likely - and antibiotics eradicate it.
In demonstrating its approach, the company has chosen to work with a simpler organism than man, namely Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes stomach ulcers.
Human papillomavirus (HPV) is likely to play a significant role in the development of cervical cancer, and the bacteria H. pylori in the development of gastric cancers.
Many scientists believe garlic helps prevent stomach cancer because it has anti-bacterial effects against a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, found in the stomach and known to promote cancer there.
The researchers also carried out tests on the H.pylori bacterium.
In a 7, 600-person study published in 2007, he found that people with a certain strain of H. pylori in their tummies were 40% less likely to get childhood asthma than those without it.
It is the one that seems to allow H. pylori to thrive in the acidic environment of the stomach (which is there, in the view of most biologists, precisely to kill incoming bacteria).
"This naturally-occurring cholesterol offers a very specific target for the design of safer drugs that could treat stomach ulcers and, long-term, prevent stomach cancer linked with H.pylori, " said Dr Minoru Fukuda, who led the study.
Gut bacteria were found to have a surprising role in disease 20 years ago, when Australian scientists showed that stomach ulcers aren't caused by stress, as long thought, but by chronic infection with the stomach bacterium Helicobacter pylori.
So by building up the concentration of ammonium ions inside its retaining membrane, H. pylori is able to fend off the destructive attentions of the hydrogen ions in stomach acid and thus live free from competition by less hardy germs.
Two common gut bacteria, Escherichia coli and Helicobacter pylori, and also the influenza-A virus, are particularly adept at playing the evasive game of molecular mimicry, and the team is now looking at possible connections between different gut bacteria and autoantibodies against melanocortins to see if they can pin down which, if any, of these bugs might be responsible.
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