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Cancer Therapy with Radioactive Scorpion Venom
BostonBTS writes "Researchers from TransMolecular, Inc. have used chlorotoxin -- a component of giant yellow scorpion venom -- to target radioactive treatments for the deadly brain cancer glioma. From the article: 'In the study, 18 patients first had surgery to remove malignant gliomas, a lethal kind of brain tumor. Then doctors injected their brains with a solution of radioactive iodine and TM-601, the synthetic protein. The solution bound almost exclusively to leftover tumor cells, suggesting that it could be combined with chemotherapy to fight cancer. Furthermore, two study patients were still alive nearly three years after the treatment.' Their paper is slated for publication in the August issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology."
Researchers from TransMolecular, Inc. have used chlorotoxin -- a component of giant yellow scorpion venom -- to target radioactive treatments for the deadly brain cancer glioma.
Just so long as they remember, "With great power comes great responsibility."
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Well that sounds like a pretty cool movie. Is Bryan Singer directing?
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
They almost make it sound like the patients survived the treatment.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Where do we find a vault-dweller to hunt some of those rad scorpions for us?
Sign me up for that!<servo>
Glad to hear that the vault dweller saved the day again. I wonder how many bottle caps the treatment will cost.
Radioactive Scorpion Venom -- It's not just offtopic in discussions which don't involve radioactive scorpion venom anymore!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I don't know about all those high-falutin' "science" guys, but any Fallout players worthy of the title were already familiar with the interesting medical properties of radioactive scorpion venom way back in the 90s. Yet another case of Slashdot being late with the news...
Do these people not know of the risks that they're taking? Look at what happened to The Scorpion! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion
Gamertag: WyleType
Radioactive scorpions?
It's been done.
Well, the door was open...
Congratulations! A winner is you!
This is just some insane publicity stunt by Stan Lee for the "Who Wants To Be A Superhero" TV show!
Injecting yourself with radioactive venom doesn't give you superpowers.
God KNOWS I've tried!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
... obligatory Spiderman joke here.
The mistakes of a clever man are equal to the mistakes of a thousand fools.
All together now: "I, for one, welcome our giant yellow venomous radioactive...", and so on.
I can understand the priciples behind this kind of treatment. Scorpion poison is a heom-nureo toxin (means that it attacks blood and nerve cells) that targets both braches of cancer cells, blood supplies and nerve connections for continued growth. An added benefit is that scorpion venom is relativly safe to humans. In all but the rarest cases that involved serious allergic reactions and death, scorpion sting victims expericed a large welp and severe pain, something like a VERY LARGE bee sting. The part that kinda doesn't make sense here is the radiological material, but I've and heard of an experimental treatment for cancer tumors that involves 10 times the level of normal radiation treatment coures and is done in a single 2 hrs process. The tumor is radiologically tagged and insulated, then a high dose of the elements Mb 117, Molybdenum, U 235, Uranium, and moderator of sorts Boron (check me on this I may be wrong on the elements but I know its a radiological dose none the less) and the tumor disappears in 24-48 hrs and has a success rate of 100%. The only thing I could see the radiological material doing is tagging the cells for destruction and giving guidance to the radioactive scorpion venom to reduce harm to healthy tissue. If this works they may have invented a cancer proof cure for cancer.
Hey folks -- take an honest listen for a moment. I don't want to come off as a new-age hippie, but honestly, the amazon rain forest has millions of poisonous bugs that we currently know nothing about. If you take a trip into the jungle and are a bug-watcher like I am, chances are you will see dozens of insects that currently aren't recognized by science.
The amazon jungle is full of life, and it's all practically poisonous plants and insects. Think about it -- the biggest predator in the jungle is man, and jaguars are a close second, coming in at about 70 pounds. All of the biomass in the jungle is bound up in plants and insects. There has been no downtime in the evolution of living things in the jungle for the past several million years. There is no winter, no dead non-metabolising topsoil -- animals and plants just eating and mating and reproducings generation after generation. The ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin says that the jungle is chemical warfare that has been going on for millions of years.
When I was on an excursion in the jungle of Ecuador, I decided to take a small hike during some downtime in the program. Foolishly I wore only sandals on my feet. Not 15 minutes down the trail, I felt dozens of ants biting my foot. Panicked, I reached down to brush them all off, but there was only three or four ants on my foot! When they bit into my skin, I didn't feel anything, but moments later, I would feel several bites in different places on my foot.
So my long-winded point is that there are millions of potential cancer cures out there, all kinds of medications and interesting chemicals. All of the chemical defenses plants and animals evolve work by interrupting or changing the normal cellular functioning of living organisms. The difference between medicine and poison is a question of dosage, as Plotkin paraphrased Paracelsus. We really need to work hard to make sure that this incredible resource stays around for future research. I don't know specifically what you and I can do, but awareness is the first step.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Side effects can include nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, and turning into a Marvel supervillian.
Patient: Doc I'm still in terrible pain, is there anything else you can do for my cancer?
Doctor (whispers): Nurse. What do we have to euthanize this patient and put him out of his misery?
Nurse (whispers): We got some radioactive scorpion venom, that should be quick.
Doctor: 100 CCs of radioactive scorpion venom, stat!
-NURSE INJECTS VENOM-
Patient: I feel better.
Doctor & Nurse in unison: Holy Sh*t!
It would seem, at first glance, that this tagging mechanism would be ideal for treatments that can be finely targetted onto that mechanism, but that it isn't going to be nearly so effective as simply a means of weakening what's left for the chemo to get.
However, this is so blindingly obvious that, since it wasn't mentioned, there's an advantage to chemo -or- a disadvantage to my suggestion that I'm missing and is amazingly obvious to these guys. Any idea on what that might be?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why is the government funding research which only benefits a few people when we still lack a space program that will save the whole species if a massive asteroid hits us? Where are the priorities? This is worse than spending money on new drinking-water wells in India when children lack basic things like laptops!
Sure, these two are alive. But each has now surpassed 150 meters in height, and continue to grow in size and power. Scores of thousands are dead in Washington, San Francisco and Tokyo. A dozen Army divisions and half the navy have been wiped out. And they're still out there on the loose, somewhere in the mountain wilderness, gathering strength for their next attacks. Things look very bleak right now, and joking about how they're "cured" is highly inappropriate given the current circumstances.
I wonder if someone could explain to me why this comment is "-1, offtopic" as opposed to the other comments that are rated "+5, funny". Call me weird, but I think this one is worth at least a "+0.5, slightly funnier than an episode of Friends".
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
... just can't bring myself to finish the joke.
without your radiation suit ..or invulnerability. That works too.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
My world, however, will remain dark.
Remember Sue...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Captain Murphy: Come on, come on, what are you waiting for?! Daddy needs his medicine.
.....welcome our Radioactive Scorpion Overlords.
(oblig.)
Howdy,
e r/Sontheimer.htm). Glioblastoma is hypothesized to be so deadly because of the
ability of cancer cells inside the brain to quickly migrate from the primary site to other sites within the brain, quickly invading normal
brain tissue. This makes surgery or radiation not very effective, since migrating cells may be hidden within normal brain that is not
irradiated or cut out. The migratory ability of glioblastoma cells is related to its unique ability to change size and morphology to
move in between normal brain cells.
The effectiveness of chlorotoxin in treatment of glioblastomas was discovered by a scientist here at my institution (http://www.neurobiology.uab.edu/Faculty/Sontheim
The size-changing migratory ability is related to a specific chloride ion channel that expresses highly and uniquely on certain brain cancer cells, including gliomas (PubMed ID: 8804043, 8967454). Chlorotoxin, a chloride channel inhibitor discovered in 1993 (PubMed ID: 8383429) was more interestingly found to bind to this glioma-specific chloride ion channel in mice in 1998 (PubMed ID: 9809993) and humans in 2002 (PubMed ID: 12112367). Although it was shown that chlorotoxin failed to inhibit migratory ability due to size-change, chlorotoxin was shown to inhibit migration by inhibition of another protein involved in breaking down the extracellular matrix, allowing cells to more easily migrate.
The strategy that TransMolecular uses to treat gliomas lies in the specificity of expression of the channel to which chlorotoxin binds. That channel is expressed on the vast majority of glioma tissue samples tested, and only rarely on normal tissue. If one attaches a weak or short-lasting radioactive moiety to chlorotoxin, a potential treatment can be to target glioma cells using chlorotoxin, and then kill them by short-lasting localized radiation. This strategy is already being used in Non Hodgkins Lymphoma and other diseases by attaching to tumor- targeting antibodies a radioactive iodine atom.
Flamebait? C'mon, mods... grow a frickin' funny bone, will ya?
If you read the study, this study focuses on those who have failed conventional treatment, as is the case with most Phase I trials.
These poor folks have no other choice but to pursue experimental therapy - otherwise their expected survival rate is MUCH less than what would occur in the normal population.
In addition, Phase I trials are NOT designed to measure efficacy - they are designed to measure safety. Phase II & III trials will be able to determine prospectively efficacy of treatment versus control.
I for one welcome our radioactive Scor... save us Spidey, save us.
Hah, that was hilarious. What's wrong with the mods?
Upon injection, the Scorpion molecules each seek out tumor cells, whip tiny hooked protein chains at them, and shout "GET OVER HERE!" while violently yanking them out of the brain tissue.
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And they will call him "Scorpio"; he who fights crime one sting at a time.
Ok they say 2 out of the 18 patients were still alive after 2 years? that means 16 died from their cancer, so how is this study any good?
I mean if they said that 13 of the 18 patient still lived then it would suggest a real breakthrough and a valid treatment but come on, two out of 18 is 11% success, that hardly counts.
And I suppose that this is administered by dogs with bees in their mouth and when they bark, they shoot bees at you?
It is the 21st century and the time for Klax has passed.
Everybody thought I was really strange back when I started this scorpion farm. But I knew it would pay off some day. Now I'm in position to monopolize this market. Nobody else out there can come anywhere close to the 2 gallons of venom a day that I can harvest.
The female test subjects who went on to bear children jealously kept their offspring on their backs as they foraged for proteins in the forest.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
"Furthermore, two study patients were still alive nearly three years after the treatment."
;)
You could also interpret this as "furthermore, sixteen study patients died within three years of treatment"...
I often wonder where they come up with these things as well. I figure it just pops out of the larger quest to just understand why things work. I suppose somewhere at one university some research is investigating how scorpion venom works. Some place else a researcher is trying to find chemicals or proteins that bond only to certain types of cells. Scientist B reads an abstract from Scientist A and thinks, "that just might work, lets see what happens if I do this with a lab rat." Of course, he probably injects it into a lot of cancerous rats figuring out how to deliver it effectively and watching for possible side effects before he dares try it on a person, because no one in their right mind would simply inject radioactive scorpion venom into a patient. Even if they really did want to euthanize them, they'd probably just overdose them on morphine.
I bring up animal testing because I'm reminded of an insane conversation I had with someone who was trying desperately to convince me of the wrongs of animal testing. Their argument, however, was not based on the dignitiy or rights of animals. Instead, they kept ranting about how it added absolutely no value to medical research and in fact was actually harmful to people! The contention was that because there are often cases where the same treatments have different effects in people than in other animals, sometimes opposite effects, that in all cases testing on animals was worthless. Even to the point that when I asked if it would be better to test chemicals like arsenic (poor example since we already know it's poisonous) on only people to determine if it was good or bad, they said yes. I'm sorry, but if something kills a lab rat, you ain't sticking it in my body, but if I've got cancer and you can show me something that sounds crazy like radioactive scorpion venom that stopped cancer growth in lab rats, I'm all ears.
While you may not realise this - you were lucky. Your wife however was not.
My wife also died of a brain tumour (Glioma but not GBM). She survived for 10 years. 6 of those 10 years were very difficult for me because I had to provide 100% supervision.
Mind you my wife did reasonably well for the first 3-4 years. She finished uni and my son was born and now he has graduated with distinction. Nevertheless I had the tripple duty of providing for my family, looking after her and running my business and I did not get much in the way of help.
Since your wife's illness was quick - you probably don't know the stress that comes with years of having to look after a person who looks relatively heathy but is totally disabled. In addition, brain injuries can create a situation where the patient's actions create danger to others such as pre-school kids. This is what I faced.
You failed to mention fungus. There are at least 15 million species of fungus and we know only a smattering about a few of them. The rain forests are devoured by the fungus.