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Detoxing With Magnets for Fun and Profit

Posted by simoniker on from the and-profit-and-fun dept.

Ridgelift writes "Wired has an article on a new way to remove toxins from the bloodstream. The Argonne National Laboratory have designed nanoparticles which 'identify, and then latch onto, target molecules. The nanoparticles are injected into the bloodstream, where they circulate through the body, picking up their target toxins as they go. Once they have made their rounds, all that's needed to remove the particles from the body are a magnet housed in a handheld unit and a small, dual-channel shunt inserted into an arm or leg artery.'"

9 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. MRI by Evil+Adrian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wonder how long you wouldn't be allowed to get an MRI for... I'd imagine those little beasties would tear you apart if you got one!

    --
    evil adrian
  2. Re:What about... by KrispyKringle · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I'm no doctor, but I'd make a couple of guesses:

    It seems like if the effectiveness weren't 100%, it may not matter for detox, since it may get the toxin levels below tolerance, but for a virus, it may simply meet as soon as you stop, the virus spreads again.

    It may be far harder to make things to bond to the virus. The particles being bonded to may have well known chemical properties, but it seems like if it were that simple to make things bond to viruses, we'd have little problem treating them, magnet or no.

    Just a guess, though. Anyone here actually know about this stuff? :P

  3. Just to be a little prophetic here by Raul654 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I heard a saying: The 20th century was the century of physics. The 21st century will be the biology and medicine.

    If you think about it, that's amazingly true. At the begining of the 20th century, Think about all we discovered - the atom bomb, computers, television, etc. Contrast that with our treatment of disease, which is rudementary at best. Just wait until genetic therapy become available, or disease attacking bacteriophages, or artificialy grown organs. I think medicine is in for revolution.

    --


    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
    1. Re:Just to be a little prophetic here by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Just wait until genetic therapy become available, or disease attacking bacteriophages, or artificialy grown organs. I think medicine is in for revolution.

      If that's the case, it's going to be a damned shame if Conservative-sponsored legislation makes all these biomedical discoveries illegal in the United States. A lot of human suffering will continue, which could have been avoided had certain people of influence not been frightened by what they don't understand.

  4. So if that's the case by mcc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I heard a saying: The 20th century was the century of physics. The 21st century will be the biology and medicine.

    What will be the 21st century's analogue of the atom bomb?

    --
    Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
    1. Re:So if that's the case by espressojim · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Speaking as a molecular biologist / bioinformatics guy...

      How 'bout "lab on a chip"? I'd prefer a sequencer on a chip, so I can tell exactly what base you have at your 3 billion positions. Let me do that to 100,000 people of various ethnicities and diseases, and I'll give you back a bucket full of cures.

      I don't know if there's going to be a single technology that is like the atom bomb, because the technology to generate data for genetic studies is ramping up at a level similar to Moore's law. There's fierce competition to develope the fastest ways to determine what your genetic sequence looks like (we do it a base at a time at targeted locations now - single base genotyping). While the scale that data can be collected on has grown dramatically, there hasn't been any fantastic breakthroughts - or should I say that people are making breakthroughs all the time?

      50 years ago, there wasn't much we could do. Now we can sequence our own genes. Or build our own genes from scratch. Sequence an animal in MONTHS (they aren't less complex than humans, we're just better at in now than a few years ago.) We can look at the expression of protiens or RNA in your cells. We're slowly determining the structure of protiens. We're learning basic facts about how genetic networks can be constructed.

      There will be no single bullet, just a constant grinding away at mysteries. There will be plenty of technology to assist, but it will still be up to the brightest of us to figure out the best way to use it.

      -Jim

  5. Re:What about... by Eskarel · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Well the body can produce things which bond to specific viruses those things are called anti-bodies and are relatively effective for most diseases spread by viruses(excluding those which kill too fast or attack the immune system(HIV)) but you're probably right it wouldn't be all that effective and there are probably better ways to do it.

    The thing I would be interested to see is a cancer treatment based on this idea. Not to actually cure cancer since I don't think that's possible with this method but to pick up the cancerous cells in the bloodstream and prevent them from spreading cancer to other parts of the body. A lot of times it's when the cancers have metastecized(no idea of spelling) to other parts of the body that you get the real problems. Not to mention it might reduce the chances of cancer recurring.

  6. Re:What about... by StringBlade · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would be leary about dragging cancerous cells out of the body using magnets unless that magnetic field was strong enough and it could be shown that none of the particles are left behind along the "exit route". If the magnet were to drop any of the cancer cells after relocating them from some other area you may actually be spreading the cancer much faster than it would have done itself.

    --
    ...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
  7. Happens all the time by Theatetus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Even scientists don't read past headlines anymore, it seems (or journal abstracts, in their case).

    I read a cool study about the influence of journal abstracts. They looked at all the surveys of the correlation between saturated fat consumption and heart disease. One early study showed there was a correlation between consuming saturated fats and heart disease. Just about every subsequent study has concluded the same thing. However, the data they actually presented in the article almost always showed the opposite; that saturated fat consumption reduces heart disease rates.

    But, all any of the peer reviewers read is the abstract. So, the myth keeps strengthening itself. I'd love to see similar studies in areas other than nutrition.

    It's not just the peasants who accept things uncritically.

    --
    All's true that is mistrusted