First Anti-Cancer Nanoparticle Trial On Humans a Success

An anonymous reader writes "Nanoparticles have been able to disable cancerous cells in living human bodies for the first time. The results are perfect so far, killing tumors with no side effects whatsoever. Mark Davis, project leader at CalTech, says that 'it sneaks in, evades the immune system, delivers the siRNA, and the disassembled components exit out.' Truly amazing."

Comments

Re:CmdrTaco's hung like a toddler

[binarylarry]

This is science, not magic.

Re:Targetting

[alexborges]

They have RNA that attaches to cancerous and only cancerous cells. Of course, there are types of cancer that wont "bind" with this thingies, but supposedly, if I remeber correctly, they are the rarest.

Re:Too small a sample size

[Barny]

Not to mention there are now at least 15 extremely happy people out there :)

Nice if true

[nysus]

Gizmodo? Call me when a reputable publication reports on this.

Re:Nice if true

[ColdWetDog]

Gizmodo? Call me when a reputable publication reports on this.

Does Slashdot count?

Artificial virus

[zzyzyx]

So, they made an artificial virus that can deliver an RNA payload without triggering the immune system. I don't see what could go wrong!

Re:Too small a sample size

[chowdahhead]

It's a phase-I trial, it only confirms safety already established in animal models and kinetics. Phase-II and phase-III trials, much larger in scale, assess efficacy and optimum dosing. That will tell us if this can be more effective than traditional chemotherapy (possible) and monoclonal chemotherapy (much more difficult to predict).

Hooray!

[Eggplant62]

This is so much win, I can hardly stand it. And I never thought I'd see the day when they'd be able to find something to kill this cancer trash. We all live in very interesting times.

Who cares?

[Weaselmancer]

Who cares how the particles get inside the cancer cells? Does it matter if we use microscopic needles and inject every single cancer cell or just throw a bunch of square pegs at square holes and hope for the best?

The end result is that the medicine winds up where it should be, and doesn't seem to be accumulating where it shouldn't.

BTW, in the above referenced Nature article it says this:

When the components are mixed together in water, they assemble into particles about 70 nanometres in diameter. The researchers can then administer the nanoparticles into the bloodstream of patients, where the particles circulate until they encounter 'leaky' blood vessels that supply the tumours with blood. The particles then pass through the vessels to the tumour, where they bind to the cell and are then absorbed.

So maybe that counts as targeted. Maybe not. I don't care either way - it works, regardless of semantics.

Re:Targetting

[cmiller173]

Because if the tumor has metastasized there may be lots of tiny undetectable tumors else/everywhere in the body.

Re:CmdrTaco's hung like a toddler

[virtualXTC]

The problem with that quote is sufficiently advanced is a relative term with respect to a technologically evolved society. For example the a working light bulb would magic for a pre-electric society, but isn't all that magical now.

This is science, not magic.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C. Clarke

What could possibly go wrong?

[spmkk]

"it sneaks in, evades the immune system..."

Um, this doesn't catch anyone else as potentially really scary? What else might (now or eventually) sneak in and evade the immune system along with it?

Not that it's relevant to anything, but Hollywood touched on this subject a few years ago.

Re:FDA Approval?

[Torvaun]

Hey, you really want to fight obesity, kill the corn subsidies so that we stop having high fructose corn syrup in fucking everything. That would be way more effective than unbanning ephedrine.