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Tailor-Made Cancer Drugs

Posted by michael on from the needle-and-thread dept.

pmineiro writes "A researcher at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a method for delivering an inactive drug complex into the body, which is only activated by certain messenger RNA sequences. This allows a drug to be selectively activated only in certain cellular contexts, e.g., cancer or HIV infection."

2 of 17 comments (clear)

  1. not such a good idea... by tps12 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    At first this sounds like a miracle drug. You inject it into everybody, and it only starts working when there's a problem. But it's pretty obvious that this is just an accident waiting to happen.

    In the presence of cosmic rays and background radiation, to say nothing of the computer monitors, cellular phones, and irradicated beef that we surround ourselves with every day, these genetic superdrugs could easily mutate. In their new forms, they'd be essentially unstoppable. One stray gramma ray could spell the end of humanity.

    I'd like to fight cancer and HIV as much as anyone else. But I'll stick to traditional means, rather than meddling where Nature never intended.

    --

    Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
  2. Scary by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Maybe I've got an evil side that sees the bad in things, but this reminds me of several stories where individuals are targeted based on their DNA. Seems like a small step from this to a poison that only activates in people with a specific DNA sequence...

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    If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.