Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Nanotechnology Used To Kill Cancer

Posted by michael on from the collateral-damage dept.

to_kallon writes "A company called Kereos is developing a pair of nanotechnologies to identify tumors that measure just 1 mm in diameter, then kill them with a tiny but precise amount of a chemotherapy drug."

7 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Imagine the other potential uses.. by davidsyes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Could this technology be abused to seek out certain cells associated with memory, pleasure, pain, etc.

    Imagine if these nanotech bots could lie dormant, awaiting activation by an authority or a torturer. People could be abducted, injected, released, and then tortured into complying with all sorts of illegal requests (get us a copy of that .025 millimeter fab/chip; give us the secret sauce recipe...)

    Alternatively, this could be used to somehow little by little nudge the lifespan of cells upward a few percentage points...

    --
    Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
    1. Re:Imagine the other potential uses.. by bersl2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The real secret of life is both preventing cells from dying and preventing cells from dividing. Each parent cell has a limited number of times its children cells can undergo mitosis. Cancer is mitosis out of control. So finding out exactly under what conditions cells begin replication is the key.

  2. Programming Error? by Alphanos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This seems like an incredibly dangerous idea to me. Supposing that the nanotech "programmer" produces a logic error, what's to prevent the thing from simply killing every cell in your body? The distinction, after all, between cancerous and "normal" cells is pretty fine.

    --
    Alphanos
    1. Re:Programming Error? by gl4ss · · Score: 3, Insightful

      huh, I wonder what kind of cancer treatment wouldn't sound incredibly dangerous to you then.
      how about RADIATION?
      or just old style POISONS?

      the thing is, cancer cells need to be KILLED...

      there's lots of treatments that are extremely dangerous.. but they're still worth it.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    2. Re:Programming Error? by Sgt+York · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Not likely. The FA was kind sketchy, but I would surmise that it is antibody or ligand targeted. Either way, the process is developed once, and then fabrication begins on a large scale. The only place where the error could be introduced is in the development phase, especially if it's ligand targeted. Genetics (and therefore antibodies) have the remote potential to change, but chemistry doesn't change.

      It is possible for something like this to go rampant, but it would not kill every cell in your body; not even close.

      The whole point to this is to be able to deliver very small quantities of drug to precisely where it needs to be. The current strategy with chemotherapeutics is that you deliver drug to the whole body, trying to keep a steady-state level in the tissues that will be lethal to the tumor, but only minimally impact normal cells. You play on the increased susceptibility of cancer cells to the drug. This is often not universally effective; which is why cancer patients can be killed by the treatment, lose their hair and often develop GI problems, among other things. The point was made before, and it is accurate: Chemotherapeutics are poisons.

      With this technology, instead of just giving the drug systemically, you chemically tie it up until it gets to the right location. It then dumps the drug payload locally, increasing the concentration right on top of the cancer cell, and only on top of the cancer cell. Even if these did just bind to random cells in the body and activate, there would be a diffuse and random population of cells that died or are even affected. Effects would most likely be minimal, if even noticeable.

      Think nuke and hand grenade. Ignoring morale and morality, a few hand grenades going off in random places in a city won't do any real damage. But, it they go off in just the right place during an attack, they can do a lot of good.

      --

      There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.

  3. Re:WOAH! by demachina · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maybe you're just a ridiculous nit picker.

    The submission didn't say its being using to fight cancer "in humans".

    James Baker, at the University of Michigan, has done something similar and has dramatically improved targeting of chemotherapy (30X improvement) in animal studies. Another link:

    http://www.forbes.com/investmentnewsletters/2004 /0 1/29/cz_jw_0129soapbox.html

    The article doesn't spell it out but if Kereos is starting human trials in 2005 they must be doing animal trials with some success at this point too. If they are killing cancer in animals with the technique then the wording in the submission is completely acceptable. If Kereos isn't showing success in animals with the technique then I'd be inclined to say the whole story is more than a little premature, but you can turn to Baker's work instead and he is fighting cancer, in animals, using nanotechnology.

    --
    @de_machina
  4. Re:WOAH! by Sgt+York · · Score: 4, Informative
    If they are killing cancer in animals with the technique then the wording in the submission is completely acceptable

    The only problem is that we've been able to cure cancer in mice for over a decade. There aren't many cancers (except the wacky ones we give by knockout/transgenic technology) that we can't cure in mice. The trouble is that when you do the same thing in humans, people either balk at it (viral delivery) or develop serious comlications when you try it (most cytokine therapies) or simply don't work (p53 adenosviral selection therapies, so far). This could be great, but it may just be another way to cure cancer.....in mice.

    --

    There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.