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Nanomaterials Used in Possible Cancer Cure
Moiche writes "Medical researchers at CalTech and the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles have successfully inhibited cancer growth in mice by wrapping engineered RNA in nanomaterials and introducing them into the bloodstream. Two polymers and a special coating allow the therapeutic RNA to enter the cancer cell and release the therapeutic RNA payload. The new technique has slowed or prevented the development of secondary tumors in lab mice with Ewing's sarcoma. Further testing is planned on humans, and with other cancers. The Diamond Age seems closer, day by day."
So now, nanobots not only can defeat the Borg, but they can also cure cancer. W00t!
A good friend of mine found out today that she has inflammatory breast cancer (IBC). I would like to belive that a technology like this could help her, but I don't think that she will ever get that chance.
This uses RNAi technology - that is the RNA they deploy is complementary to the RNA produced in Cancer Cells, and so they complement with the cancer RNA into a double-stranded piece of RNA - which screams virus - and the cell destroys it. Therefore stopping the growth of the cancer.
This method of using the nanomaterials to protect it and enable it to enter the cancer cells surely looks very promising!
"Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write it should be hard to understand."
Today I've booked my pet mouse, muis in for surgery to remove her third tumour. The previous surgeries have been successful, but it would be ace not to have her go through a general anaesthetic again.
(I realise this is an important development for fixing human cancers, but as a pet owner - it would be great to have these working fixes for the little ones it's been demonstrated on!)
Mice may save mankind again!
The smallest buzzword ever created by Man
i just hope that microsoft doesn't answer that with. either Active RNA or RNA.NET just immagine if spammers get popups in your skin pigments!
nanocancer has it's own government website.
I believe in this more than virus gene therapy.
You can't let the immune system interfere!
Good stuff. I keep up to date on this .
Molecular biologists have been trying to engineer a safe, reliable, effecient method of drug delivery to selected cells for decades. This includes modifying viruses, poxviruses, herpes viruses, adenoviruses,retroviruses, etc.. but they all have problems. Creating the viruses isn't difficult, nor is mutation a serious problem. What is difficult is selectively targetting ONLY the cells you want, getting ALL (or most) of them with a sufficient quantity of whatever agent you are delivering. That's hard.
The big deal about this result isn't RNAi (which people have known about now for several years) but the success in hijacking the transferrin transporter to bring the RNAi in.
This discussion will, most likely, not really go anywhere. Slashdot simply doesn't have many persons these days who are particularly informed on the sciences. What this discussion will contain is:
- Two people who really and actually understand the science and make interesting deep posts
- 15 people who sort of kind of understand the science behind this and make comments which are interesting and good points-- but contain misinformed elements
- 30 people making jokes
Discussions on science.slashdot fall into two categories now: ones like this article; or stories that can be tangentially in some remote distant way linked to either the theory of evolution, the concept of global climate change, or research into stem cells. The former category acts as I have described above. The latter category is simply swamped by nothing but hundreds of comments from right-wingers ignorantly attacking the idea of science, and hundreds of left-wingers ignorantly defending the idea of science, with no room left for comments on the subject matter of the article itself. In either case it's something of a hunt to find those couple really ontopic posts, and very hard to tell the difference between the people who know their stuff and the people who only appear to.
Is there anything we can do about this? *Should* we do anything about this? I suppose we should just be grateful that at least there are those handful of decent posts in every science.slashdot article and the signal to noise ratio is better than at least, say, your average microsoft story on slashdot. However, I seem to remember a time that people on slashdot were nerds in the sense that they enjoyed seeking knowledge, and so knowledge about science was praised, singled out, and common. Now the slashdot readership is either simply apathetic toward science, treating it as something other people do-- or actively seems to view science as something dirty, and attempts to understand and effect the universe as human presumption. In either case there is little room or consideration left for a third category of persons.
OK, I'd love for there to be a cure for cancer, but I suspect that more likely this is just the perfect bunch of buzzwords to hype for funding, IPO or whatever. nanoxxx: tick; cure for cancer: tick.
The last cure-for-cancer stock I watched were Cell Pathways. Lovely rollercoaster stock. Perfect for pump and dump of IPO share options etc.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The other thing... WTF, its a mouse.
My family's dog died, he was a damn good dog, smart and with a lot of character, and I miss him. But he was getting old and if it wasn't kidney failure it would have been something else, soon, and I've accepted that. And there are people starving to death every day in Africa- and not to use that as an abstract rhetorical device, I've been there and seen them- shit, this nation needs to get a grip and get a fucking sense of perspective. They're just pets.
During our lifetimes, it will be extremely exciting to see all of this happen. The scary part is how far we take it. Bad things can come of it too.
Berto
"Well established?"
I'd like to see your reference...I've never heard of that position.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
The tricky part is that each individual cancer must have a particular treatment created for it. It's not a generic cancer cure, but rather one that can be targeted against certain very specific types of cancer. They'd need to know exactly what's genetically wrong with the cell in order to cure it.
Not only that, but if the iRNA sequence not only matches the problem RNA but also a healthy one, you could potentially be interfering with normal gene function. That's why they targeted Ewing's sarcoma, a cancer that "provides a clear and unambiguous target".
Finally, this doesn't seem to actually cure the cancer, but rather puts it into submission. Think of the cancer cell's nucleus spitting out bogus RNA, only to be chopped up by iRNA that matches it. You'd need to take the treatment essentially forever. Drug companies could make billions.
Do you have sources?
I am not claiming that's a fake, I find what you are saying very interesting, but I'd never heard about it!
There seems to be plenty of data but the jury is still out:
Google: cancer+alkaline+PH+balance
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Have you ever tried to changed your internal pH to be alkaline balance? I'm sure you haven't cause you would be dead. The body can only exist in a narrow range of pH to functional properly.
If you even bothered to read the post, you'd see that this treatment has prevented tumor growth.
That's certainly positive evidence, if not proof. Used in combination with treatments like chemo, you've got a good regimen.
Normally, the idea of chemo is to hopefully kill cancer cells faster than they're being produced. Something like this could halt the production, allowing for much faster elimination of cancerous mass, and possibly even a reduction in chemo dose.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Great links. Basically various groups of people trying to sell something and various other groups trying to shut them down.
Not exactly "research."
--MarkusQ
Strange that they are using PEO and cyclodextrin as a "encapsulating" polymeric source for the transferrin. I would think that PEO would be not very good choice for living cells (cancerous or non-cancerous). If the body needs to digest this polymer, PEO has a history of problems with its by-products. Most of the by-products are ethanol, which would kill the cells. Probably callogen or similar forms would be better. Perhaps, they are already using similar types of polymers.
The idea is that the nanomaterials are delivering RNA that compliments endogenous mRNA - the resulting double stranded RNA is degraded and the protein isn't made. I think TFA mentions that, and if it didn't it should.
Have you ever tried to changed your internal pH to be alkaline balance? I'm sure you haven't cause you would be dead.
In which case it would most definitely be impossible for cancer to form.
The technique works!
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Just as a fyi, the press release for Hu et. al.'s research can be found at the American Association for Cancer Research proceedings page -- it's more technical than the Economist article linked above, but is quite informative.
Dude, do you realize that electronics 30 years ago were in their infancy? OOooh look, a transistor radio!
Nanotech will grow exponentially just like electronics (expect some Moore Law regarding nanotech to appear soon). Problem is, exponential growth rates are VERY SLOW on the beginnings.
But wait in 10 or 15 years when nanotubes manufacturing is completely understood and industrialized.
I can't believe that this comment was scored 5,Informative. It is totaly misleading. The RNA:RNA hybrid does not scream "virus". In fact it goes under the "virus radar" and does not elicit the interferone responce. A more acurate description would be that it hijacks a mechanism that is used in generation of small regulatory RNAs (micro or miRNAs) and results in cleavage of the targed. The biggest achievement of this research is the delivery system which looks very efficient and is the best alternative to virus vectors so far. As for the use of RNAi in any therapy, I have my reservations. The reason is that these RNAs can and do work as miRNAs and thus are not as selective towards their targets as people would like to think. As a result they will perturb the expression of multiple genes in addition to their target.
Sorry, but this is standard molecular biology and polymer chemistry, the way it's been done for decades. It has nothing to do with "nanotechnology".
Nanotechnology, as in the Diamond Age, refers to a new class of self-replicating molecular devices. Nanotechnology was overhyped, has delivered no scientific insights, and has been a complete failure. That is why its proponents are now going around and trying to relabel work in material science and biology, work that happens to be at the right scale, as "nanotechnology".
Feed the mouse to the starving Africans.
(oooooooh, that was sick, but strangely amusing!).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Ok, let me see: a genetic payload designed to disrupt normal cell operations, a coating designed to protect/hide the payload until it is injected into the cell. Isn't that a virus? Is this the first artificial virus? (Excepting the modified natural virii which have been used for decades for medical research).
#include "cunning_plan.h"