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Using Anthrax To Fight Cancer

Posted by timothy on from the if-it's-not-one-thing dept.

StarEmperor writes "According to this BBC news article, scientists have used a version of the anthrax toxin to kill tumors in mice. The toxin was so effective that after just one treatment tumours were reduced in size by up to 92%."

3 of 27 comments (clear)

  1. Effectiveness by JohnFluxx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When something like this kills off a large percentage of cells, say even 99%, I always wonder why 1% survive - are they resistent somehow? Or the toxins can't reach those particular cells? Or what?

  2. Re:How this bad boy works by Lord+Sauron · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I am not a doctor, but isn't urokinase produced by the kidneys ?

    If so, we can assume the kidneys have great concentrations of it, and this Anthrax treatment could harm the kidneys, leading to kidneys failure. Not so good, IMO.

  3. isn't it interesting by Hatfieldje · · Score: 3, Insightful

    to think that this never would have been discovered if we hadn't had that Anthrax scare. I mean, you can't tell me that scientists were just sitting around and then said, "Let's see if we can alter Anthrax to kill cancer". It was more of a "Recent events have shown us that Anthrax is an efficient cell killer. Let's take it and see if we can customize it to attack cancerous cells." And then they used a characteristic that separates cancer cells from normal cells and exploit it to the benefit of man. What a great world we live in.

    It makes me happy to see scientists turn something that has been portrayed as only an indiscriminate killer (which, unaltered, it is) and use it to battle one of the body's toughest enemies.

    Bravo.

    --
    for maximum effect, the preceding post should be read monotone and at a steady cadence