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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."
How do they get the horse so small?
-- Jessica Simpson
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.
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.
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.
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.
From TFA:
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Lastly, some folks asked about what happens to all those dendrimers when they've done their job.
Beware of geeks bearing GIFs
Ahh...perhaps that's how these things work...the dendrimers sneak in tiny little GIFs of goatse and tubgirl, and the tumor loses its appetite and starves to death.
Brilliant!
Brilliant!
^_^
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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.
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.
Sure, this might make you feel uncomfortable, but guess what will make you feel even more uncomfortable? Having your body bombarded by potentially levels of radiation so high that it is potentially fatal.
There are so many ways to improve upon killing humans. Is one more way really worth worrying about? So someone has found a better way to diliver a chemical payload into a human cell. Certainly I bet someone can figure out how to make said payload lethal. Who cares though? We already have chemical and viruses sitting around that can kill within seconds. It is like worrying that some nation went from owning 5000 to 10,000 nuclear weapons, or worrying about getting shot 100 times rather then 50. If genocide is your goal, the tools are already avaliable.
I personally am excited at the prospect of a new treatments like the one outlined. Dead is dead. You can throw HF in my face or you can throw your nano-poisonin my face. Either way, the outcome is the same. On the other hand, nanomedicen is not chemo. Chemo has the potential to be almost as bad as the cancer. If a nanomedicen can kill cancer and do less harm to my body, I am all for it, paranoia be damned.
Viruses, bacteria and cancer are also all "provided" by nature....
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Finally, nanotechnology exists in nature. Arsenic is natural, many natural plants are poisonous, along with various animals, fish, insects, etc. The natural surface of Venus is lethal, you can't live underwater, falling off a cliff is natural.
Crazy Luddites.
Currently hooked on AMP
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.
I'm curious, what exactly about this makes you feel uncomfortable?
something about the process makes me feel uncomfortable.
Try having cancer.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
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