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Nanomedicine Kills Brain Cancer Cells
destinyland writes "Scientists from the University of Chicago and the US Department of Energy have developed the first nanoparticles that seek out and destroy GMB brain cancer cells. Nanoparticles killed up to 80% of the brain cancer cells after just five minutes of exposure to white light, showing the promise of nanomedicine — highly-specific intervention at the molecular scale. Because nanomedicine could repair brain cells or damaged nerve and muscle tissue, the NIH has established eight Nanomedicine Development Centers around the country for their Nanomedicine Roadmap Initiative. Researchers have also used gold nanospheres to search out and 'cook' skin cancer cells with light — 'It's basically like putting a cancer cell in hot water and boiling it to death,' says one researcher. And the NIH Roadmap ultimately predicts 'novel tiny sensors ... that search for, and destroy, infectious agents.'"
Seriously, we always read on Slashdot the great experimental breakthroughs, but we never really see the applications and doctors don't even know what is wrong with you half the time. Most of the problems I have had and saw a doctor for, they had no real clue what he problem was. Only later did I realize myself what caused the issue, like a certain food or allergic reaction. Medical practioners can't even tell if you have a virus or a bacterial infection, and instead just prescribe antibiotics because the patient demands it (blood tests for this are only semi-accurate, and can give false positives and negatives).
When are we going to see some real "in office" diagnostic technology, or is this just not going to happen in our lifetime?
It won't work.
Having worked on glioblastoma for a major pharma company, I'm quite confident that this is garbage. There's already very nice cures for glioblastoma if you're treating it in a dish... most notably a protein named BMP4. The problem is, you can't deliver it to the brain. If you can't effectively deliver a protein to the brain you're sure as hell not going to be able to shine visible light on the author's fancy nanoparticles in order to activate them in vivo.
The antibody in question binds the EGF receptor. Off the top of my head I can think of..... oh about every stem cell in your body that expresses this receptor. The author's system is great in a petri dish, but there's a reason it's published in a low tier journal.
As someone that lost a brother and a sister to brain cancer, I hope it will become as simple as a video game. Even though we lost my sibs back in the early 60's, the ways to fight the disease haven't really advanced as much as I would expect. I hope this tech will be the one that brings humanity beyond this horrible disease.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Actually, another approach to this is to activate the particles is by way of low-level and non-invasive radio frequency energy.
This man was the one that started a lot of the research into this kind of stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kanzius
As a cancer survivor myself, and somebody that has undergone Chemo, I am very intrigued and hopeful about this type of research. Lets hope it all pans out as we all hope.