Slashdot Mirror
Nanotech Trojan Horse That Kills Cancer
An anonymous reader writes "University of Michigan scientists have created the nanotechnology equivalent of a Trojan horse to smuggle a powerful chemotherapeutic drug inside tumor cells - increasing the drug's cancer-killing activity and reducing its toxic side effects." From the article: "The drug delivery vehicle used by U-M scientists is a manmade polymer molecule called a dendrimer. Less than five nanometers in diameter, these dendrimers are small enough to slip through tiny openings in cell membranes. One nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter, which means it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair."
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I know that this technology is supposed to be helpful, but something about the process makes me feel uncomfortable.
How do they get the horse so small?
-- Jessica Simpson
How many football fields is that?
Trojans infect my system
Therefore Windows = Cancer
Symantec has already identified the Trojan and released an upgrade to its popular Norton Anti-Virus software.
"If you are using Norton Anti-Virus, you do not have to worry about having your cancer cured without your knowledge," a spokesperson said.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
Or does this chemical only attack cancer cells, and the dendromere helps it into all cells?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
One nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter, which means it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair.
I'm sorry, but I just don't get it. How many of these suckers can I fit in a Library of Congress?
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
I for one, welcome my new nano-masters. But seriously, is it feasable that someone could say, influence human thought or motivation using this technology?
Until the tiny bots rebel against the your and takeover your brain!
Omni *Tin foil hat*
Cancer is a UK Critical Structure?
The real news here, if I can interpret the press release correctly, is not that the nanoparticle is the trojan horse, but that its small size *allowed* the researchers to construct the trojan horse.
The article summary is a bit brief- basically, cancer needs a lot of folate. Moreso than normal cells. These folks attached both an anti-cancer drug and a bunch of folate to a nanoparticle, which, due to both its small size and tasty-looking folate, is able to enter cells and deliver the anti-cancer payload rather than slowly diffuse it through the cell wall.
This is still a bit of a shotgun approach, as normal cells still get targetted to some extent, but *much* less so than previous methods.
This sort of stuff really impresses me, I think fields like this are *so* important to future research. The thing I don't get is why do people protest [slashdot.org] ideas like nano-tech without knowing what the possible beinfits are?
In case you are like me and you just want to know how they targetted the cancer cells, this is a very brief rundown:
All cells require folate to survive. Cancer cells suck up folate like it's crack. They put the poison in the folate. All cells absorb some of the poisoned folate. Cancer cells absorb most of it.
Pretty nice idea, but it made me wonder about the push to get expectent mothers to take excessive amounts of folic acid (folate). Does that make them more prone to cancer by giving the cancer cells extra food?
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
Is this really nanotechnology? Sounds like a new drug. Isn't nanotechnology an actual device that is just miniscule, and not just ANYTHING that is measured in nanometers?
We mentioned this long back at PedsDoc.com (http://www.pedsdoc.com/index.php?name=News&file=a rticle&sid=77)
r ticle&sid=12) in 1999, 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger died during a gene therapy clinical trial at the University of Pennsylvania, which led to an FDA investigation and closure of the Penn gene therapy program.
Again when you are considering trials in humans... it is a little premature to say whether any technology will be used on humans soon(or later)
For e.g.
More incremental work, with the goal of increasing the precision of the treatment and reducing the chance of side effects, is necessary before any kind of treatment can be tested in humans.
In a related trail, (refer: http://www.pedsdoc.com/index.php?name=News&file=a
With so many side-effects being hidden from view, or "discovered" later, cancer sufferers should take any therapy with a pinch of salt.
One nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter, which means it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair.
It's nice of them to break that down into terms the average person can understand. Now, if only they could break down the mass of the particles into Volkswagons (nano-Volkswagons?) and discuss how many Libraries of Congress worth of data went into this research, I'll have a better idea of what's really going on.
They do get bonus points for using the word "diameter" instead of "width" (you know, so it sounds more scientific), though since most hairs are somewhate ovoid in cross-section, they fail to say which axis they're using to determine this. I mean, this is important! How else will I be able to properly visualize 5 nm?! If I pick the wrong dimension, I could be up to 50% off in my visualization of what's going on, more so if the hair is from someone with curls!
PS: I love science reporting. Honest.
That green slime had it coming.
It would be interesting to see if this process can be specifically tailored to other pathologies. Perhaps an application could be to deliver drugs that are specific for attacking HIV infected cells to attack the virus more directly?
Ban Engadget - moderators censor comments!
... don't ride a Nanotech Trojan Horse That Kills Cancer.
Protesters stripped down naked to protest the University of Michigan's support of nanotechnology. One protester stated, "Nanotechnology is bad because it is umm, err... Nevermind I am just gonna get naked cuz its bad."
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
Lastly, some folks asked about what happens to all those dendrimers when they've done their job.
Cowboy bebop or something, in which rogue anti cancer nanobots turned out to become a deadly weapon. I'm not yer average tinfoil hatter, but i dont trust these "bots".
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
these dendrimers are small enough to slip through tiny openings in cell membranes Yes, this is true, but the dendrimers by themselves are (I'm assuming) biologically inactive, so having these pass through the membrane isn't a big deal. From the looks of it, the dendrimer is being used as an attaching point to link a molecule that will bind to a receptor on the cancer cell to a cancer fighting drug. This looks like an interesting new way to focus the cell-damaging anticancer drugs to tumors, reducing the amount of collateral damage on healthy tissue that is often the case with anti-cancer treatment.
I read today morning that they are using dendrimers for preventing HIV from infecting T-cells.
HIV cells have certain receptors on the surface. those receptors are used to open a doorway into T-cells (our soldiers). Some molecules that target HIV receptors are attached to the dendrimer and then the dendrimer is released into the body. when the dendrimer gets to the HIV cell, the molecues bind to receptors and block their action of infecting healthy cells.
Protesters of nanotechnology and science-friction pundits promised me grey goo. Where is the grey goo? I guess nanotechnology isn't living up to its promise -- we'll have to settle for it doing what we design it to do. ;^D
'nuff said. Be careful.
Those damn crazy god-playing scientists! These little trojan nanodendrimers are already attacking
UK Critical Structures!
This is the kind of shit that makes me want to shout "M Go Blue!" Seriously, they should have pep rallies for the U of M medical center. I'd buy tickets, if they had beer.
The enemies of Democracy are
[ ... ] it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair.
Still having trouble with this illustration - are they standing on end or lying down?
-- Foolproof systems do not take into account the ingenuity of fools.
Nice to see this start to happen.
.1% of it, and also enable us to up the dose as relevant only to the affected parts.
Based on what I understand of nano-tech and the human body, I think we're going to see a lot more of this, and this will be the first medical nanotech revolution: Creating drugs that are targetted only at the things they are supposed to affect.
Imagine wrapping, say, kidney drugs in a nanotech container that only opens in the kindeys, and is otherwise harmless. Or imagine an anti-inflammatory that only targets inflamed areas.
This will cut down a lot on undesirable side-effects caused by flooding the entire body with something to affect
This obviously doesn't apply to everything, but this is the first advance I expect to actually get used. We're a long way from lil' machines that can safely clean out plaque from our arteries (though we recently saw some advances towards doing it unsafely this last week), but this is quite doable, I think.
This is a continuation of efforts to deliver drugs more specifically to the target using polymers, micelles, etc.
e livery.html
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8034/8034drugd
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Is this a biodegradable polymer?
How hard is it to attach molecules to these tree-like structures? If these polymer dendrimer are exposed to various other molecules will some bond naturally, or do they have to be tailored to a specific molecule?
Does that mean that in potential future patients, any free/unabsorbed nanoparticles will be excreted into the public sewage systems, and being (I assume) unfilterable, thereby enter the earths water cycle?
So when you put those together, will these nanoparticles be able to float freely in our oceans and rivers, their dendrimers bonding with molecules found in nature, and then if conditions are right potentially take those molecules inside our cell walls?
I know - the actual number of these things for cancer patients will be really small, but workable techniques tend to get expanded, and if they don't break down they'll just pile up over time. I'm not qualified to do anything but ask these questions, I'm just wondering whether there's any reasonable risk that once these hit the outside world they could turn around and be just as effective at delivering cancer-causing agents they pick up randomly from the environment.
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
Its nice to know that someone is making some progress with cancer theraphy. Chemo is just plain ugly, and radiation is just trading one cancer for another.
This is exciting stuff.
snooort
Oh sure. First they claim they're just going to cure your cancer. Next thing you know, they're fitting a laser beam over your eyeball and sending you off to the Alpha Quadrant to kidnap some bald French guy.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Most current examples are Larry Page of Google and Tony Fadell creator of the iPod.
What I don't understand is how Brown University is consistently ranked higher than UofM in the US News & World Report every year. When is the last time you heard anything from Brown University for innovative research or their professors brought in as an expert in the fields of medicine, engineering, law ...etc etc. It shows an obvious bias towards Ivy League schools and for private university over public ones. UC Berkley also suffers from this bias.
Fuck football indeed. I didn't go to our engineering school for the football, I went there for a great engineering degree. I think its rather myopic and uninformed people who view UofM as solely a football school. Although in the case of University of Nebraska this is probably true. We Wolverines are much much more than football.
which means it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair."
Is that an RCH or a black one?
Androk
Methotrexate is an old drug that inhibits DHFR (dihydrofolate reductase). Folate is needed to synthesize thymidine, one of the four building blocks of DNA. DNA synthesis is important for quickly growing cells (i.e., fast growing cancers - that's not all cancers of course). and explains the relative selectivity of MET for cancer cells (if the normal cell isn't growing, it doesn't need to make much DNA). Side effects of such chemo agents are largely due to their effects on quickly growing cells (hair, stomach lining, etc.). I find it interesting but also perhaps counterintuitive that they're using folate to deliver an anti-folate drug.
...
I expect that, in the real world, cells that are methotrexate resistant(a folate analogue) would be resistant to targeting via folate transporters
it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair.
Yeah, but you would never get that many in a row a one time. They are like cats!
Why do folks blindly accept things before the downside has been discovered?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Looks like "The rest of us" are just going to have to die of cancer since we won't be able to afford treatment anyways.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
Isn't the idea behind chemo (sp?) that all cells get harmed some, but cancer gets poisoned a lot? Hopefully it's far more targeted than chemo.
I just wonder hom much other cells will "ingest" the poison trojan horses, and what the side effects are.
And now for the very tasty folates of Dr. Miles Davis...
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
wi11 it m@k3 my p3niz b1gg3r??
list of spammers
do you even think before you post, or do you just try and be a permanent jack@ss?
I'm going on my lunch break now. How long will I be gone? Imagine if you placed 60 minutes side-by-side...
Yes, *that* Bob Vila.
I for one, welcome my new nano-masters.
It's called OVERLORDS!
Sheesh.
isn't worth the millions of mice that die horrible deaths in these experiments
http://news.nanoapex.com/ - They have a grey goo comic there :)
What if the goal is not to make you dead? What if the goal is to make you silently infertile, with a low enough dose that it is cleared from your system and is untracable after a few days?
there's more than one way to commit a genocide
we constructed a very small rabbit instead! Then once the cancer cells have taken in the bait; sir Lancelot, sir Galahad, and I will jump out of the rabbit, takeing them completly by surpise!
On second thought, lets just hope the cancer cells don't have catapults.
From TFA
By improving the therapeutic index of cancer drugs, we hope to turn cancer into a chronic, manageable disease
So, if you have cancer, they'll be able to provide you with medicine for the rest of your life to manage your disease? I want in on the IPO, because that's going to make some serious cash for someone.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
I sent the link to my wife, an Oncology Nurse Practitioner. She said that this type of transport mechanism isn't all that new.
She went on to say that they've already packaged Taxol (a breast CA chemo) in a similar way and supplied this link for more info. It's called Abraxane.
As a person recently diagnosed with cancer and currently in chemo, I find more than passing interest in this story. Although, very clearly the approach described here isn't going to help me, I've spent a lot of time researching cancer therapies of various types and I feel qualifed to comment.
Cancer isn't one disease, it's a group of related diseases. A solution that works for say breast cancer may or may not work for other cancers. The idea of targetting cancer cells specifically for apoptosis (cell death) isn't new but the idea of using a delivery vehicle that can have a deadly payload seems to be somewhat novel.
There are a number of other drugs in development that might have a similar effect. Also there are human clinical trials already in progress for methods of creating a vaccine tailored to a specific person by using that person's tumor. Given that a phase 1 trial of the approach described in the article will not start for two years and that trials generally take at least 7 years before approval, it's likely that other equally novel delivery methods will be approved substantially before this one. This approach will have to show it's better than the others that will be on the market already when approval time comes along.
With some popular cancers such as breast and colorectal cancers, it's quite likely that there will be better therapies. However, if this approach can be targetted to the really deadly cancers (like lung and ovarian cancers) or the many cancers that don't have any good treatment options, this could be a real winner. If you can wait long enough before getting your disease.
You know, that's really clever. Now, all we need to make it really tin-foil-hattish is to figure out a way for it to target only brown people.
Seriously, though, did you just come up with that, or did you hear it somewhere else?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
It's all in the title. This bit is just to stop /. making some stupid comment about cats and tongues.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I figure you already know that cancer is a collective term for more than 100 different diseases that display the same three characteristics - cell mutation, the ability to mask that mutation from the host immune system and angiogenesis (the tumor's ability to create its own blood supply).
Although killing the nasties is probably a good stopgap measure, my preference would be to somehow enhance the host immune system and then just let nature take its course. Failing that I've been interested in some antiangiogenesis treatments - Vioxx had shown some antitumor acvity but now it's pulled from the market. Celebrex does too but to a lesser extent.
I know a couple of people who are doing Thalidomide in closely monitored environments - it's amazing to me that the same drug that caused all those horrible birth defects 40 years ago is now getting some use saving people's lives. It's too early to tell whether it'll someday become mainstream but there has been some positive response in trial data already.
I still think it's possible to kill the nasties without half-killing the host - the poison, slash and burn school of cancer treatment is still right out of the Middle Ages, even though there have been pretty great strides made in controlling chemotherapy side effects. The side effects ain't what they used to be, but there's still gotta be an answer that doesn't involve poisoning the hell out of the patient.
Good health to you, AC.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
Sorta like you supporting ideas like nano-tech without knowing what the possible dangers are?
Just to clarify, Luddite != Stupid. Nor does it imply that they are incapable of prosecuting an argument, or dissecting a faulty one.
After all we wouldn't want to support the luddite belief that technofetishists just steamroller ahead without giving a thought to anything but the great god of technology...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
...but what a crap blurb. At least make some mention of how the fsck this polymer does it's targeting of cancer cells. Or does it release the poison indiscriminately?
Hohum...off to RTFA.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
...for an anonymous cowardly jack@ss. Your razor wit has cut to the chase like a surgeon's scalpel, excising with deft precision the cancerous inanity of the parent, and dangled it distastefully from your derisive forceps to be publicly mocked. Or perhaps you merely expose the imposture of the Emperor's exposure by employing ad hominem rhetoric?
I recently saw a presentation on nanoshells being used to identify and destroy breast cancer tumors. Probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen...
For the love of $DEITY, loose != not win!!!!!
"The University of Michigan has filed a patent application on targeted nanoparticle technology. A licensing agreement is currently being negotiated with Avidimer Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company in Ann Arbor , Mich. Baker holds a significant financial interest in the company."
This will not be a 'cure' for cancer. It will be another 'treatment'.
Cures are not profitable. Treatments are.
Lets just ad a new scientist RSS news feed to the front page of /. . All the stories from it pops up on /. after 12 hours any way.
/. some time, not alot in some cases :-)
This would save the guy writing the summary for
And the rest of us would know stuff like this 12 hours before.
spelling is for people who doens't know better...
While I'm all for buzzword compliance, shouldn't this really be classified as "chemistry"? Dendrimers were first created a quarter of a century ago by chemists, working in chemistry labs, at a university department of chemistry, using traditional chemical synthesis techniques.
This has nothing at all to do with micro machines, itsy bitsy robots, or blue goo.
-- Anonymous pedant.
Make that grey goo. (Because everyone knows that nanobots are grey.)
-- Anon. Pedant
That has got to be the funniest definition of pregnancy I've ever read, and me without mod points...
Those who complain about affect & effect on
nanotech trojan horses kill you.
come on fhqwhgads
Bread is man-made. (Nature doesn't cook).
:-P
Explain that to my sunburnt skin and also that piece of roadkill down the street sizzling in the Nevada sun.
http://www.crnano.org/overview.htm
It is a good thing that this is being researched. It is only a matter of time before some madman or madmen come up with this method to inject a biotoxin into the population, and we would need a fast way to counter it.
Use condoms to kill lobsters?
You can't handle the truth.
methotrexate works by imitating folic acids structure already. the article implied an increase in efficacy, but did not give any dosing details. this seems like the wrong experiment to see if this is really going to work.
Nanotech Trojans? That's great! Now Jacko can actually have sex with a woman rather than molesting children.
>By taking advantage of a cancer cell's appetite for folate, U-M scientists are able to prevent the cells from developing resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs.
One of the biggest problems with today's cancer drugs is that they do not work for very long. If this technique can prevent cancer cells from developing resistance then it has the potential of keeping cancer cells at bay. That would mean a patient could live a long time on one drug without ever needing to be cured. There may be a lifetime of side effects, but life expectancy would increase dramaticaly
There's a lot of GIF's hidden on this page but they aren't very sexy or anything. The page has what is called "Information Gifs": http://free.seekon.com/Strongheart10 and discusses a new kind of car design that harnesses kinetic energy instead of dampening it through car springs & shocks. Uses the K.E. (kinetic energy) for pressing compressors, compressing air thru the use of lever(age)s (swaying motion of the car or truck negotiating the highways). This enables a new engine using compressed air to be -in effect- MAKING ITS OWN FUEL as it drives along. The page also contains invites to GM, Ford Motor, & Chrysler to build the engine... which of course represents a "disruptive technology" so it will probably be suppressed so it doesn't upset the apple cart we've built... However, the apple cart was first begun in 1903 when early automakers considered making all our engines compression powered. They dropped the ball & committed us to 100 years of carcinogen hell. In 2003 I figured out how to correct the aberration. Just telling, not selling.