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New Nanoparticle Cancer Therapy
quixote9 tips us to a BBC story on a promising new cancer therapy using targeted nanoparticles. From the article: "The researchers used the nanoparticles to zero in on the network of blood vessels that supply the tumors in mice with nutrients and oxygen... [They] developed a technique for amplifying [the nanoparticles'] homing ability by designing a multifunctional nanoparticle that binds to a protein structure found only in tumors and associated blood vessels... The tests showed that within hours of the injection, the artificial platelets began blocking the supply without harming normal tissues. The scientists believe the nanoparticles could also be used to carry drugs to the tumor."
The scientists believe the nanoparticles could also be used to carry drugs to the brain.
Marijuana
he said with a collective smirk
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
The scientists believe the nanoparticles could also be used to carry drugs to the tumor.
I believe in a twelve-step program, they call that being an "enabler".
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Sometimes I look at how things like this work and I am just amazed and somewhat grateful to be living in an age with such incredible technology.
I wonder what happens when the tumor is gone and a tiny little lump of clustered nanoparticles is free to float around on its own. Stroke, anybody? I'm not a doctor, but they're probably going to need to find a way to dissolve these artificial clots when they finish with the therapy, or they'll cause all sorts of circulatory problems.
"the supply without harming normal tissues", however test subjects did develop a taste for human flesh and could only be stopped by a bullet or sharp blow to the head...
Every few months there is a cancer break through it seems. When are we finally going to see something in the hospitals? Is it the FDA and bureaucratic red tape, are these vapor cures? If its red tape, why not bring your drug down to Mexico, I'm sure plenty of cancer patients wont mind crossing the boarder for something that works. And if they every do cure cancer, invest all your money in Philip Morris.
Now after I get cancer by inhaling nanoparticles, they can inject me with some to cure it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When asked for comment on the story, the Governor of California said, "It's not a toomah!" Later, he issued a retraction, adding, "If it bleeds, we can kill it!"
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I do hope that something good comes out of it. But it is that you hear about little break throughs like these all of the time and nothing seems to come from them due to the massive hurdles that keep coming up.
Kind Regards
Simon Harvey
Yeah, I heard about a different cure for cancer yesterday, and another one the day before that, and the day before that...as a matter of fact, almost every day for the past 40 years. And still no cure for cancer. And maybe there never will be. Why not report the story when they've proven that it does on a human being?
too much of the world's attention and resources have been spent on AIDS/HIV research. How many people do you personally know with AIDS/HIV? How many do you know with cancer? Wonder if something like this would work on a tumor that doesn't have a major blood supply like the cancer my wife has???
Some of my colleagues (e.g., Vittorio Cristini) have been modeling the potential benefits of nanoparticle drug delivery for a couple of years now. As has been known for some time (e.g., see papers from R.K. Jain), the blood vessels that grow to supply tumors with nutrients (the tumor-induced neo-vasculature) are different than regular, non-pathological vessels. They tend to be more tortuous and leaky, with larger holes than regular vessels.
This is where the nanoparticles come in: one can design nanoparticles that encapsulate cancer drugs in particles that are too large to exit normal blood vessels but can pass through the leakier, tumor-induced blood vessels. This naturally targets cancerous tissues.
However, there are other issues to consider. Due to the high pressure inside tumors (due to the rapid proliferation of cells within a confined area, among other factors), along with the leaky vessels, blood flow can be very poor inside a tumor, and so while the drug may be targeted toward and delivered to the tumor, it may not actually penetrate very far into the tumor. Some great work has been done by Steven McDougall, Sandy Anderson, and Mark Chaplain in this area. In particular, look at their DATIA (dynamic adaptive tumour-induced angiogenesis) papers.
One way around this (suggested by R.K. Jain and Vittorio Cristini, among others) is to use targeted anti-angiogenic therapy to prune out the worse blood vessels and improve flow within the tumors, thereby also improving drug delivery and penetration.
Lastly, on the therapeutic aspect of blocking up tumor blood vessels with the nanoparticles, the work we've done (see this paper, which will appear in the Journal of Theoretical Biology soon), indiscriminately cutting off the nutrient supply to a tumor can increase tumor invasiveness by increasing morphological (shape) instability. (See some of the animations here.) So ironically, while more tumor cells may be killed, those that remain may spread farther and initiate new tumors. Given that hypoxic tumor cells are more likely to be resilient to further treatment (e.g., hypoxic breast cancer cells), this is a problem worth keeping in mind when planning anti-angiogenic therapy.
If you're interested in these topics, please do check out the paper above. (You can also download it at my website without any special memberships.) Even if you don't like it, we have a lot of references you may find handy. -- Paul
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
What about just some generic artificial platelets that clot bloody wounds like the natural platelets? Platelets are by far the most short-supplied blood product that constrains blood products. Every serious trauma patient who gets into a hospital quickly exhausts their own platelets, and consumes easily a half-dozen donors, usually triple or more the amount of red blood cells they consume.
Anticancer targeted platelets are a great advance. But many times as many people need the simpler generic stuff. Before pharmacos get paid lots of public money for the anticancer platelets they'll surely patent for maximum profit (after heavily subsidized and risk-mitigated development), they should produce the generic platelets that aren't as profitable, but help save many more people.
--
make install -not war
I admit to a large amount of cluelessness in this area, so can someone enlighten me on a semantic distinction?
I know that all things "nano" are hot right now, but if this had been invented 15 years ago, would it just have been called a "drug"? In other words, is this simply an engineered molecule or substance or whatever that binds to specific receptors in certain ways for certain effects... what makes it "nano" other than its size? If that's the only criteria, then why aren't ALL drugs "nanoparticles"? Are these particles bigger or produced in a different way?
I'm just confused - when I first heard of nanotechnology I imagined little machines. That may be a misconception on my part, but I still feel that simply being a little grain of something (even if that something was engineered to have useful properties) doesn't quite seem to warrant the designation.
Who wants a cancer cure these days?
Cancer is a fantastic business that is making the big pharmaceutical companies and the government ludicrous profits. The chances are that if there was an amazing cure out there, we would hear very little of it. There is a strong conflict of interest regarding the cure of the most common and deadly diseases.
Maybe this breakthrough discovery has made it this far precisely because it is not going to cure cancer so easily (and definitely not cheaply) after all. Helping the delivery of chemotherapy drugs is just another way of continuing to sell these drugs.
This has some great potential for immunohistochemistry, one of the major methods of measurement in Neuroscience. Essentially this would allow much cleaner binding to target sites, and thus cleaner readings.
One of the difficult things using current methodology is how to colocalize two or more different types of receptors, seeing which cells contains chemicals x and y, have receptors a and b, or some combination thereof. Being able to identify these structures more reliably and more cleanly will take a lot of the guesswork out of this procedure and hopefully make it even more powerful.
Someone should call ImClone. What's the difference between a "nanoparticle" and a "small molecule"?
I say this mostly in jest to illustrate how overbearing IP can be in today's world. More power (and funding) to the researchers who are pushing this forward.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Maybe, instead of fixing the problem medically (it does seem to be a trend these days, a pill for everything, no?), we should stop polluting the environment with carcinogenic nanoparticles that we all end up ingesting, one way or another. While we're at it, let's make a return to non-engineered food. Honestly, almost every product in a typical grocery store contains high-fructose corn syrup. Let's stop, step back, and take a look at what we're doing to ourselves.
Geeks talk about the importance of people, but anything involving Microsoft will have 500+ comments in 5 minutes, and anything involving science will have barely 100+ in an hour.
I survived cancer. My body, through whatever freak genetics and immune system programming, managed to wall off all of the cancerous tissue into nodes and the doctor, 9 months later, excised them and didn't contaminate my system with a single cell. I owe that man my life- it's interesting to live your life knowing that from the age 17+ you were supposed to die.
Here is a very interesting article about cancer and tumours, and how to fight them off. Yet no one feels the urge to add to quip "MS will 0\/\/N U" or something? Problems?
There's been quite abit of talk about nano-particles and buckyballs (kill off any fish, lately?) carrying different payloads once they're tagged with some sort of handle into different cells. This is a VIABLE treatment that, if I were back in that situation, I'd undertake if it meant jumping in front of a needle meant for a mouse.
Does anyone here know what it means to corner your doctor after your mother leaves the room- dragging yourself out of bed when every step is an agony of nerves you didn't know you had- and ask them what the fuck it is you're seeing in their eyes when they look at you and why they can't meet yours?
As geeks we've always blamed society for not having theirs organized right- let's get ours right before I see any more stones cast. Fix health. Then life. Then worry about which fucking OS is going to dominate the market next year.
Because the last time I looked in the mirror I didn't have to debate whether or not Bill Gates had anything to do with whether or not I that 'air you're breathing now" was real.
We hear about these new hi-tech and revolutionary cures for cancer and other diseases every month. But when will it hit the market? Not before millions die before cancer within the next year.
Not sure if it's obvious to others, but this seems to me like a really good way to kick off medicine in a new direction. :)
Let's say this technique fails to cure cancer - that's not the end of the road, though - someone will surely try it to target nanoparticles elsewhere, like AIDS. I'd invest a lot of money into this venture if I had any
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
popularized notion of nanotech is that nanites that actually perform stuff, compared to what really happening now is, basically smashing stuff to very small proportions. In itself is interesting, but not as cool and challanging as building microbots that do operate on molecular level. Its the sort of co-relating plasma and nuclear detonated propulsion to be alike based on the fact that it they both use atoms.
I suppose people should call things what they are, nano-pulverisation and nano-engineering, would be better alternatives.
I was thinking about the last big cancer breakthrough that said doctors were targeting the wrong thing when trying to fight cancer for the last however many decades. They try to kill the tumour but leave the cancer stem cells that perpetuate the disease. That's why when they remove the tumour, the cancer just eventually grows back. If they can target the cancer stem cells with the nano-particles that would be cool. Get rid of the the symptoms and the disease.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Allow me a small disclaimer: I apologize to any person in specific who has been touched by cancer, I mean this post to be in general, an abstraction applying to all humans as a whole.
I hate to be a heartless asshole but maybe cancer is a natural method of population control.
If nobody were to die of cancer, and if we were to find cures for heart disease and strokes, and cure AIDS......... wouldn't the population of earth just keep increasing until nobody has enough natural resources to support themselves?
Of course there will always be a bigger, badder disease just waiting to fill the niche left behind by the "conquered" diseases, so maybe the point is moot!
I got to be imagining War of the Worlds when reading about what these little guys can do.
In 15-20 years it will be the much improved Nanites vs the young and upcoming bacteria bots that can form themselves into pieces of equipment in your body (based on a previous article).
In the end, them red/white blood cells will be very outdated amdist the new War of the Miniture Worlds.
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I have a relative in DIRE need, with a very far progressed cancer... Actually the situation is VERY DESPERATE!
I wish this would have come out long time ago... I wish my grandma could get this NOW...
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You obviously have no understanding of modern (food)technology. Something you do not understand does not make it magic, cause cancer and be evil. The lure of 'going back to nature' may look like an easy way out, but it is not. For one thing there would be no modern creature comforts and not enough food to feed the whole world. You need to be very smart to thrive as a selfsustaining farmer, something which you do not seem to be. How happy would you be to die in the first drought, unable to produce enough crop to feed your family and to pay off the morgage?
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The last sentence seems important...
"The scientists believe the nanoparticles could also be used to carry drugs to the tumor."
Interesting. I believe, soon, scientists will find a way to deliver powerfully addictive drugs to these cancer cells. Once addicted, drugs will be removed. The cancer cells, then, will eat each other in order to get their "fix". And once there's only 1 cell left, it will eat itself.
The "Tracking proteine" you mention is actually known as ampetite (though my spelling is not renowned for being sufficiently accurate, especially with medical terms), and is more of a radar for the hollowed shell the chemo-therapy drugs have bee stored in.
When the "virus" locates the tumor (not the "cells" in the bloodstream) it latches on, and produces a scaled explosion equivelent to if you were to watch a five ton atom bomb on impect course with the earths crust.
Don't let this scare you. Remember, it's scaled to size.
This is thought to revolutionize the medical world, and is proven to cure scrotal cancer in rats.
The "cure" should be available by 2014 if all tests are surpassed, and we haven't burnt ourselves to a crisp. Via Global Warming
The fate of mankind is ib the hands of the creativly maladjust...