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:Finally..

[McGiraf]

... to start smoking ....

Targetting

[oldhack]

How do they direct them into tumor cells?

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:Targetting

[newcastlejon]

The same way that so-called "targeted" painkillers work: they don't.

Every time I see that damn Nurofen advert I cringe

In addition, Davis and his colleagues were able to show that the higher the nanoparticle dose administered to the patient, the higher the number of particles found inside the tumor cells—the first example of this kind of dose-dependent response using targeted nanoparticles.

Either I'm missing something really important or this is the biggest 'Well, Duh!' moment I've had this year

Re:Targetting

[reverseengineer]

The nanoparticles have a component that attaches to the transferrin receptor on the surface of a cancer cell. Transferrin receptors are highly abundant on cancer cells because iron (what transferrin carries) is needed for cell division processes. Coincidentally, this is a fact I learned the first time this story was posted a few days ago.

Re:Targetting

[socceroos]

They may be admitting in a round-about way that only a small percentage of the nanoparticles make it to the affected cells - therefore they are saying that by pumping the body full of these nanoparticles can have a higher rate of success in targeting the cells. Big 'duh', but possible admission of low accuracy?

No, I didn't read the article.

Re:Targetting

[newcastlejon]

That's not targeting, though. It's equivalent to throwing a million square blocks at 999,999 round holes and one square one. You'll hit the target, but not because you were actually aiming at it.

Re:Targetting

[Kral_Blbec]

Incorrect. There are significant physiological and genetic differences between cancerous cells and normal cells. It would be entirely possible to target the RNA sequence to only bind to malignant cells and ignore normal ones.

Re:Targetting

[alexborges]

No, I didn't read the article.

You should bro.... they tested the tissue of the attacked melanoma and if you inject more bots, more turn up in the tumor and they kill it.

This thing rocks. Combination therapy will probably mean complete healing of until now absolutely deadly cancers (or I hope so).

Re:Targetting

[alexborges]

BTW, targeted painkillers do not have a funky RNA that attaches to a cell. This babies do.

Re:Targetting

[Edmund Blackadder]

I see your point that this does not seem like the ordinary concept of targeting. But in pharmacology that is exactly what targeting is.

Re:Targetting

[oldhack]

Do normal cells have the receptors on the surface also? If so, are they distinct from those on tumor cells?

Re:Targetting

[newcastlejon]

I think the parent missed my point: if you inject x nanoparticles and only x/100 make it to the tumour, how could you be surpised at x/50 appearing there when you inject 2x at the start?

In addition, Davis and his colleagues were able to show that the higher the nanoparticle dose administered to the patient, the higher the number of particles found inside the tumor cells—the first example of this kind of dose-dependent response using targeted nanoparticles.

Why is this the first example of the concentration of nanoparticles showing a correlation with the initial dose? To me it seems obvious that this would happen, so I'm curious as to what normally prevents this.

Re:Targetting

[cortesoft]

How else would you define targeting in this context other than to mean only binding to cancerous cells? It seems you are implying that targeting can only refer to conscious 'aiming', but that is only a subset of things that can be considered targeted.

Targeted can mean 'select as an object of attention or attack'. That is what they are doing when the design a drug.. selecting cancer cells for attack, and then designing the drug so it will only effect those cells. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_design

Targeted drugs DO mean something specific in pharmacology.

Re:Targetting

[wisty]

I'd guess that normal cells don't have as many, because they don't replicate as fast. But some fast-replicating cells (hair, some blood cells, etc) might have a few. Note, chemo also targets fast-replicating cells, which is why it kills cancer and makes your hair fall out.

So this would be a suped-up chemo treatment, and hopefully a bit more specific.

Re:Targetting

[Cheech Wizard]

1. Yes. 2. Yes.

Re:Targetting

[icannotthinkofaname]

Great post. But please, can we stop using effect as a verb?

No. We only need to effect such a change such that people stop using the verb "to effect" incorrectly.

Re:Targetting

[Nefarious Wheel]

Great post. But please, can we stop using effect as a verb?

And how exactly do you expect us to effect this change?

Re:Targetting

[GaryOlson]

...if you inject x nanoparticles and only x/100 make it to the tumour...

So, put the patient under with general anesthetic and inject the nanoparticles directly into the tumors. Still cheaper, lower risk, and more efficient [outpatient] treatment than current cancer treatments.

Re:Targetting

[MichaelSmith]

Incorrect. There are significant physiological and genetic differences between cancerous cells and normal cells. It would be entirely possible to target the RNA sequence to only bind to malignant cells and ignore normal ones.

Yeah but chemotherapy and radiotherapy work the same way. The problem is that the characteristic of cancerous cells they bind to is the fact that they grow fast. The problem is that these treatments also damage normally fast growing tissues. My father in law lost all his bone marrow that way.

I hope that these nanoparticles don't bind to any other crucial tissues.

Re:Targetting

[MichaelSmith]

So does radiotherapy. The problem being that fast growing tissues are the ones you absolutely need from day to day. Bone marrow and digestive system tissue are other examples.

Re:Targetting

[mcpkaaos]

Don't fall into the trap (and then drag clueless yet for some reason pedantic mods with you). Effect can be a verb and affect can be a noun. Look them both up.

Re:Targetting

[ShooterNeo]

Yes but the beauty of this treatment is that it's two stage. Once the RNA gets into a cell, it can be targeted to ONLY harm cells with the RNAs of cancer floating around in their cytoplasms.

Re:Targetting

[wxwz]

The technique being applied is that of RNA interference (RNAi) which was awarded the Nobel prize in 2006. There's a good layman's introduction to it over at PBS.

For a more in-depth introduction, Craig Mello, who was co-recipient of the Nobel Prize gave a Google tech-talk.

Re:Targetting

[cmiller173]

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

Re:Targetting

[MichaelSmith]

That sounds great but I wonder about these software virus detectors which see signatures in legitimate files. It depends on the number of permutations you are dealing with I suppose.

Re:Targetting

[DamnStupidElf]

News flash, that's how biology already works. It's organics and enzyme soup with brownian motion to do the rest.

Re:Targetting

[amRadioHed]

Well, the summary says that the results have been perfect so far, so that's a real good sign. Frankly something like this sounds too good to be true, but every once and a while breakthroughs do happen, so we can hope!

Re:Targetting

[icannotthinkofaname]

The verb "to effect" was used incorrectly. However, it sounds very similar to another word. What he was looking for was the verb "to affect," but he simply chose the wrong homophone.

I can solve the problem differently if I understand it differently. :)

Re:Targetting

[robot256]

Ah, but if you know what word you want, you can pick the right pronunciation. To a refined tongue, affect and effect are not homophones. Excuse me while I put on my bowler cap and go for a stroll before tea.

Re:Targetting

[wickerprints]

Why is this the first example of the concentration of nanoparticles showing a correlation with the initial dose? To me it seems obvious that this would happen, so I'm curious as to what normally prevents this.

The dose-response characteristics of a substance carries important information about its pharmacokinetics, such as how rapidly it is metabolized and excreted. It is NOT obvious that increasing dose always results in increased concentration in the targeted tissue(s), just as it is the case in chemical reactions in which increasing the proportion of one reagent may not necessarily increase the yield. For example, increasing dosage may also increase hepatic clearance. What the researchers demonstrated basically boils down to this: the nanoparticles' activity is highly specific to the tumor cells and does not get "broken down" or excreted proportionally higher as the dose increases. Such characteristics are highly desirable.

Re:Targetting

[interkin3tic]

It would be entirely possible to target the RNA sequence to only bind to malignant cells and ignore normal ones.

Yeah but chemotherapy and radiotherapy work the same way. The problem is that the characteristic of cancerous cells they bind to is the fact that they grow fast.

No they don't work the same way. Radiotherapy, and most current gen chemotheraputics, work against all dividing cells. It sounds like these nanoparticles use a specific protein (NOT rna) to bind to the cancer cell, then once inside they cause RNAi (this is where the RNA comes in) to knock down a specific gene transcript.

I obviously don't know the specifics, but if you make a nanoparticle that binds to and is taken up by cells expressing a specific growth factor, that's -not- going to be taken up by all cells. There are a lot of growth factors, and often in cancers, growth factor receptors are expressed far more than they normally are. So the targets are found only on some cell types, and there are hundreds more on the cancer cells than the healthy cells.

Furthermore, you could target individual genes to be knocked down by the RNAi effect, potentially genes that aren't even expressed by the normal cells which are expressing the receptor you're targeting. I'd guess for maximal efficiency, you'd be targeting housekeeping genes that all cells needed, but in principle you could make it a gene that cancer specifically needed.

Both levels of specificity, even if they're not used, are a far cry from "damage every dividing cell and hope you kill the cancer before you kill the dividing tissues the patient needs to survive." And they don't actually use RNA to bind to the cell, they use protein to target the cell and RNA once inside the cell to target the specific gene. ... by the way, I am not a molecular cancer biologist.

Re:Targetting

[MarkvW]

I was negatively affected by the pedantic affect of your post. Your attempt at effecting grammatical conformity creates an unpleasant effect.

Re:Targetting

[reverseengineer]

Yes, normal cells could be expected to have a smaller density of transferrin receptors than cancer cells, but almost all cells could be expected to have some, given the importance of iron ions in cells. The reason transferrin receptors are of such interest is primarily a mechanical issue. Each of your cells is covered with complicated receptors that serve many purposes, and if you're looking for a way for cancer cells to stand out, there are many receptors involved in growth and division whose numbers are typically swollen on cancer cells. The issue is that most of the candidates simply meet messengers at the cell membrane, and pass along the information of the message into the cell via a second messenger. Others like the glucose transporters let cargo through a narrow and specific channel. When transferrin receptors bind to transferrin at the cell surface, however, a vesicle forms around the bound transferrin+receptor complex and pulls the whole thing inside the cell. Once deep inside, the transferrin is induced to let go of its iron ion cargo, and the iron-less complex heads back to the surface. Given that cells will essentially swallow anything that can be made to bind to a transferrin receptor, this could become an important future route for drug delivery.

However, yes, it is like chemotherapy in that it will affect proliferating healthy cells as well as cancer cells (could be a lot less toxic in terms of metabolic clearance compared to current oncolytics). The protein they cut production on using RNA interference, ribonucleotide reductase, is already targeted by a few chemo drugs in use like gemcitabine. Any cell that needs to make DNA bases needs a working copy of ribonucleotide reductase; rapidly dividing cancer cells just have a much more urgent need. However, this nanoparticle/siRNA system has the advantage of being highly adaptable. Find a new oncogene target? Write a new siRNA to silence it, and you have the equivalent of a whole new class of cancer drug.

Re:Targetting

[Splab]

Also another important factor, many cancer patients are terminal, most if not all will probably want to roll their dices with a treatment that works by targeting specifics with a small chance of misfire vs. a treatment that works by almost killing you, trying to take out the cancer in the process.

Re:Targetting

[MichaelSmith]

Depends. My wife's dad was 74 and started chemo with 5FE. He hit a rare toxicity issue and died within a month from the treatment. If he had known how dangerous the treatment was going to be for him he would have opted for no treatment.

Re:Targetting

[aurispector]

This does seem almost too good to be true, particularly in the context of existing treatments. Despite years of effort, 20 year survival rates for cancers have not really moved. You can burn it out, cut it out or poison it out, but if you don't get it all (and you usually don't) current treatments can extend a patient's life but don't generally effect a cure. It will be interesting in the extreme to see how this pans out.+

Re:Targetting

[daem0n1x]

Now years and years of tests will have to happen before this is approved as a medicine.

But I believe many cancer patients will be happy to offer themselves as guinea pigs, they have nothing to lose.

Re:Targetting

[daem0n1x]

An uncle of mine was given 2 years to live, with treatment. After a few chemo sessions, he refused treatment, since it was extremely painful. He lived 7 years more and died suddenly. A week of suffering in bed was all he got. He was weighing about 45 Kg, but lived his life fully until that last week.

Cancer is one of the saddest things that can happen. Seeing someone slowly fade away without any hope is horrible. I'm very happy this breakthrough has worked. Maybe finally we'll defeat cancer for good.

Re:Targetting

[daem0n1x]

It occurred to me that this could be a powerful virus killer.

Viri escape the immunity system because they hide inside the cells. Since they don't have DNA (only RNA) and can't replicate themselves, they convince the host cell to replicate them.

If there's a way to penetrate the cells and target some RNA sequence we could defeat viri.

Re:Targetting

[lostfayth]

Help & Preferences -> Discussion -> Viewing

I believe you're looking for "Slashdot Classic Discussion System". It's not exactly the same as it used to be, but it is more familiar.

Re:Targetting

[2obvious4u]

æffect

How's that?

Re:Targetting

[David Gerard]

This is an insanely big deal. The siRNA mechanism got its discoverers a Nobel prize in 2006 ... but if this delivery mechanism works well, it'll warrant a Nobel for these guys too. There are all sorts of therapies that would theoretically zero in on a disease gene and take it out cleanly without side effects (e.g. for AIDS as well as cancers), but with no delivery mechanism - this could be a huge deal on the level of antibiotics.

Re:Targetting

[David Gerard]

Yep. The real win here is that this is an exciting new delivery mechanism.

Re:Targetting

[MarkvW]

You've just broken my brain. I can barely handle umlauts.

Re:Targetting

[vishbar]

If this effects cancer, then I'd say it probably shouldn't be used.

Re:Targetting

[HiThere]

Odd. it caused me to wonder about clearing malaria out of people. Something that's never been possible. But I suppose that depends on being able to locate the cells in which it's hiding, and I don't know whether *that's* possible.

Re:Targetting

[Civil_Disobedient]

Odd. it caused me to wonder about clearing malaria out of people. Something that's never been possible.

That's not entirely accurate. Plain-Jane quinine "clears" malaria, in that the red blood cells which are infected quickly die. The problem is that the doses needed for effective treatment against strains with rapid lifecycles (like P. falciparum ) can cause some nasty side-effects, like cinchonism, paralysis and death. This is why most health professionals recommend the less-dangerous artemesinin for non-resistant strains. Often this is in conjunction with quinine/chloroquine, which is administered at the end of a cycle "just in case" because malaria has an irritating tendency to emerge from dormancy after treatment.

Re:Targetting

[ShooterNeo]

Yes, this would work. The RNA that would be the target sequence for this treatment could be PART of an RNA string on HIV. We would then target the RNA molecules to bind to the receptors for helper T cells, which are the ones that HIV causes the most problems in. The CD4 receptor is one such target. This would definitely slow down the virus (although since current treatments can ALMOST eradicate HIV in a patient, it's hard to say if the treatment would be worth it)

Re:Targetting

[HiThere]

Death is a pretty nasty side effect, and if it has a "tendency to emerge from dormancy", then it hasn't been cleaned out.

Re:Targetting

[Civil_Disobedient]

if it has a "tendency to emerge from dormancy", then it hasn't been cleaned out

It has a tendency to emerge from dormancy when the less-dangerous artemesinin is used. Which is why quinine/chloroquinine is administered at the end of a treatment, in much smaller doses that are decidedly non fatal.

Re:CmdrTaco's hung like a toddler

[binarylarry]

This is science, not magic.

Re:Isn't this...

[LtGordon]

The basis of I Am Legend (the movie) was the modification of a virus to selectively treat cancer. Unless these "nano-bots" learn to replicate themselves, I think we'll be alright.

Re:Too small a sample size

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Well, what's meaningful is that they all didn't up and die, and that a bigger round of testing is to go forward.

Re:Finally..

[h4rr4r]

Your battery website needs to get with the times, NIMH LSD or nothing.

Re:Too small a sample size

[Truth is life]

The point of the study is to make sure that people don't explode when the procedure is performed, or for something similarly unpleasant to happen--it's a Phase I study, not a real effectiveness trial.

Not just cancer!

[Nihiltres]

From comments on TFA, "The Lab" writes: "a science editor would be more capable of pointing out what is really exciting here, which is the ability to stop cells from producing a given protein."

I think the cancer aspect is great (if it works) but this has potential for curing a whole host of diseases.

Now we just need to figure out how to change people's DNA on the fly.

Re:Not just cancer!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa slow down there. Do you know how long it'll take to patent the treatment for each individual disease?

Re:Not just cancer!

[wizardforce]

RNAi is an ancient anti-viral defense mechanism found in everything from plants to humans. That said, I agree. Any disease that is caused by the production of a given protein could in principle be treated using a derivative of this RNAi nanoparticle technology.
 

Now we just need to figure out how to change people's DNA on the fly

Viruses come close to this, it is just a matter of expanding what they can do (eg. enlarging their payload) and reducing the incidence of side effects like severe immune reactions.

Re:Not just cancer!

[yabos]

"Now we just need to figure out how to change people's DNA on the fly."

Apparently all it really takes is a few daily hyposprays to keep the alien DNA at bay and revert your original genome.

Re:Not just cancer!

[snowgirl]

From comments on TFA, "The Lab" writes: "a science editor would be more capable of pointing out what is really exciting here, which is the ability to stop cells from producing a given protein."

I think the cancer aspect is great (if it works) but this has potential for curing a whole host of diseases.

Now we just need to figure out how to change people's DNA on the fly.

Does this mean that we could make the body START to produce a protein? Like... to fix the human dependency of Vitamin C in our diets?

I know I mentioned this one time on slashdot before, but it'd be super cool to fix us to being like every other animal on Earth (except Guinea Pigs) and make our own Vitamin C...

Re:Not just cancer!

[Trebawa]

This has enormous potential. You could target it to pancreatic cells, for example, and knock out a gene that reduces insulin production. The problem is that this technique can't insert new DNA, so it can't repair the damaged genes that cause a lot of genetic disorders.

Re:Not just cancer!

[Hurricane78]

Done. Take a normal virus, remove its dna, replace it with your replacing fragment, and inject it into the body.
I’m simplyfiying things here, but that’s it.
I’ve read about some team doing it, about 5 years ago.

Re:Not just cancer!

[QBasicer]

We can't even apply a lot of updates (like a new kernel) that easily without a reboot, how can we expect to do it to something vastly more complicated like a living organism?

Re:Not just cancer!

[Puff of Logic]

The problem with retroviruses is that while they are capable of inserting genes into DNA, they do so at random. If the insertion occurs in the vicinity of an oncogene, the retroviral treatment can actually result in a malignancy.

Re:Not just cancer!

[dzCepheus]

Now we just need to figure out how to change people's DNA on the fly.

On the fly? "What am I working on? Uhh... I'm working on something that will change the world, and human life as we know it." - Seth Brundle, The Fly

Re:Not just cancer!

[drkim]

Hey!
How could you tell I got DNA all over my fly??!!!

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?

Re:Nice if true

[spud603]

How about Nature?

Re:Nice if true

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

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

You came to Slashdot because Gizmodo isn't a reputable publication? Hehehe.

Re:Nice if true

[raddan]

What, those hippies? I want something Fair and Balanced!

Re:Nice if true

[nog_lorp]

http://www.myfoxla.com/dpp/health/caltech-nanotech-cancer-research-20100321

Re:Nice if true

[nog_lorp]

If only the noise they generated was fake, we wouldn't have to listen to it.

Re:Nice if true

[Anonymous Coward]

If u account this to be a reputable source.

http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13334

Re:Nice if true

[SiMac]

You mean like Nature, as the second link states?

Re:Coming soon

[Barny]

Nah, what you need is a good wet floor mop, shotguns run out of ammo, chainsaws run out of fuel, but a good mop will keep at least 4 people alive ^_^

Re:Finally..

[moteyalpha]

Well I can finally go to California, everything is known to cause cancer in California,
Or "its known to the State of California to cause cancer".
I could never figure it out, so I just stay away from California.

Someone call Dr. Imakurusu

[Dachannien]

Nanotechnology, huh?

And here I had all my money on the Murai vaccine.

Then take a statistics class

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as the subjects have the same distribution as the population, this sample can be considered representative of the population. This means that they didn't pick 15 terminal patients and didn't pick 15 100%-survival-rate patients. You can achieve quite a lot when your sample is well selected.

Re:Then take a statistics class

[TubeSteak]

You can achieve quite a lot when your sample is well selected.

Sure, but "n = 15" just means "more study needed"
By the time they get to phase 3 trials, their sample size will be a lot bigger.
Which, btw, is what makes clinical trials so expensive.

Re:Then take a statistics class

[BitZtream]

I really wish they'd require a common sense class along side that statistics class so people like you would stop making statements like that.

Theory is not reality. The universe in which any sample size is usable as long as it has perfect distribution is the same one that contains Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny.

Re:Then take a statistics class

[BitZtream]

Self reply ...

I just feel I should clarify, in order to get the perfect distribution you need a sample size at least big enough to all possible variations in the distribution in the ratios present in the population.

I.E. The samples too small to provide useful statistical results. Its just a general indicator.

If all 15 people live perfectly for a normal life after this it doesn't mean its 100% safe, it just means its highly likely to work well on a lot of people, but its entirely possible that those 15 people happened to share something that no one else has. Likewise if all 15 people die tomorrow, its a really good indication that this isn't going to be that useful on the population, but it doesn't mean that everyone will die from it ... those 15 people may just have been exposed to a secondary compound since they are all early test subjects that happened to interact and kill them.

The sample size is just too small to provide truely useful stats when it represents about 4 bits of diversity in a population that is defined by a code that allows for 38 bits of variation currently representing about 33.5 bits of that.

Its funny how engineers like to over sample. An engineer wouldn't accept a sample size less than 39 bits to be safe, even though the total population is smaller than that currently. Statisticians on the other hand are happy with pretty much any number greater than 1 bit.

Re:Then take a statistics class

[HiThere]

Yeah, but the confidence values are wrong. Not that you can make better ones, but they hide assumptions of the "I didn't think of that" variety.

Which is why engineers oversample. (But they also tend not to select their samples correctly. O, well.)

Oversampling is good. Being careful about your sample selection is good. But even better is to *also* mix in some actual random samples...because there are effects you didn't think of. (Note that this increases both the amount of oversampling and the expense of the study. And it doesn't decrease the care with which the statistically selected sample must be chosen.)

But 15 is too small for any statistical conclusions other that deadly or generally safe or somewhere in between. This report seems to say that this procedure is generally safe. (It also looks promising as a treatment, but that's too much to say from this sample.)

SWEET SUCCESS

[OrwellianLurker]

Can we now laugh at all that silliness that smoking cigarettes leads to death? I can't wait till Camel gets in on the cancer killin' business.

Re:SWEET SUCCESS

[subanark]

1. Start smoking, paying $$$ for cigs
2. Get cancer
3. Pay $$$ for an operation to remove cancer cells
4. ???
5. Profit ?!?

Re:SWEET SUCCESS

[NigelTheFrog]

Too bad this won't do anything for emphysema.

Re:SWEET SUCCESS

[Statecraftsman]

Camel Lights, now with siRNA Nanoparticles!

Re:SWEET SUCCESS

[GaryOlson]

Now dioxin can be disposed of in the water using siRNA Nanoparticle additives.

Re:SWEET SUCCESS

[stuckinphp]

It is still better than the alternative

1. Start smoking, paying $$$ for cigs
2. Get cancer
3. die.

Re:SWEET SUCCESS

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Sell cigarettes
2. Watch buyer get cancer
3. Sell cure for cancer
4. (repeat 1-3 until stockholders have earned enough money to be satisfied and the bonus agreement has reached its federal ceiling)
5. ???
6. Profit ;-)

Re:SWEET SUCCESS

[MachineShedFred]

I think you're missing:

4. Still die from Emphysema

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:Artificial virus

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

So, they made an artificial virus...

Fail.

Re:Artificial virus

[gujo-odori]

All that will accomplish is to fill the world with beautiful, bisexual nympho women who still aren't interested in you...

Re:Artificial virus

[cmiller173]

I can see what could go right: stealthily delivering an array of genetic changes to women to turn them all into beautiful, bisexual nymphomaniacs.

...who brew beer.

Re:Artificial virus

[dontmakemethink]

So, they made an artificial virus...

Fail.

Does "mechanical mutagen" sit any better? The things alter and/or destroy living tissues with extreme precision and effectiveness. If they can be built to target cancer cells, they can presumably target other genetic markers, including RACE. First military to successfully weaponize it is basically in a position to make the holocaust seem like a frat house hazing.

Re:Artificial virus

[dontmakemethink]

FTA: "What's so exciting is that virtually any gene can be targeted now. Every protein now is druggable." Eesh... hope I'm wrong.

Re:Artificial virus

[Elbows]

I didn't see any indication that the nano-particles are self-replicating, or capable of spreading from one person to another, so you'd need to inject each target individually. It's probably easier just to shoot them.

Plus, if I understand correctly, cultural conceptions of race don't map very well to genetic differences. So finding a race-specific gene to target might be harder than you'd think.

Re:Artificial virus

[vman1992]

nothing wrong with that. :O) :0 www.dvdinabox.com

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).

Re:Coming soon

[spun]

Very big ^_^.

dead . winter is an awesome web comic. If you haven't read it, start at the beginning and you will be surprised how long you keep clicking 'next.' I read well over a hundred before I had to take a break.

You lucky, lucky bastard

[spun]

You had a paperclip, a zippo, and a linoleum knife? You lucky bastard. In my day, we had to chew our cancer out with our bare teeth. My testicular cancer was particularly hard to swallow.

Re:You lucky, lucky bastard

[abigor]

Try chewing out cancer of the gums sometime, buddy.

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.

Re:Isn't this...

[erroneus]

It also goes to show how a carefully engineered nano-particle can be used to kill people in a rather covert way. CSI probably doesn't yet have a way to detect this stuff.

Re:Too small a sample size

[brianleb321]

I cannot see anything meaningful coming from such a small sample size. It has potential but obviously much more research is needed.

You can't just jump from rats to tens of thousands of humans. That's why the sample size is 15. That's why it's a Phase I trial. There are four phases of clinical pharmaceutical testing that follow preclinical (animals, in vitro, etc.) testing. Phase I normally tests a treatment in healthy humans in order to see the negative effects of the treatment (this is not necessarily the case in cancer treatments because all cancer treatments have significant negative effects). Phase I trials are only a couple dozen people, max. Successful Phase I trials allow for Phase II trials. These usually have one or two hundred people with the disease the therapy is intended to treat. In Phase II, they are mainly gathering pharmacokinetic data (half life, metabolism, volume of distribution, etc.). Phase III is where you start to see the trials you're clamoring for. These are typically done in several thousand patients, all with the disease in question. These trials are placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blind studies (the hallmark of research). Statistical analysis then allows you to determine if the therapy was effective in improving outcomes. If so, the drug goes to the FDA. 30 days later, it is officially on the market. Phase IV studies begin here, and continue perpetually. They are called post-marketing surveillance, and they study long-term effects (because previous trials are not long enough to do this), as well as very rare adverse effects (where the sample size in previous trials may have been too small to correctly detect the progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy that occurs in 0.1% of patients treated).

So don't claim the study size wasn't big enough - it wasn't supposed to be. Phase III trials are what you want. Phase I and II trials are of no interest to anyone outside of health professions, really.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em

[mirix]

No cure for cancer? pfft.

Re:Coming soon

[Barny]

I had to call in sick for a day ;)

Re:Isn't this...

[newcastlejon]

Of course they do: ENHANCE!

Re:Too small a sample size

[forgot_my_username]

It may be a small sample size, but man this is cool stuff.
From TFA, the siRNA can stop any mRNA produced protein.
Eventually, this could be huge for treatments of diseases and conditions associated with mutated proteins.
Before, they had the siRNA, but no real way to deliver them.
So, this is a double wammy!


There is a story with a video about this and siRNA

In fairness, I wrote the story, and found the video... but it I think it is very cool.

This is incredible. I hope this is the cure.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Its about time we solve the cancer puzzle.

Re:Isn't this...

[Trebawa]

You'd have to engineer particles that target a specific vital tissue (and stop thinking "brain", because the blood-brain barrier would block that), and then deliver a piece of siRNA that silences an essential gene for that tissue. You'd also have to inject enough of these into the person to have this effect. Still, it could be useful to replace the siRNA entirely with some kind of toxin (it would be nearly undetectable, because it wouldn't linger in the bloodstream).

Re:Finally..

[Khyber]

You need to get with the times. Ni-Zn overall hasvoltage much closer to alkaline cells AND higher mAh capacity, and we have nicked the problem of whiskers forming on the anode.

Now we're just waiting for it to be made in AAA size.

Re:Finally..

[MichaelSmith]

Well I can finally go to California, everything is known to cause cancer in California, .

Yeah just like working for the ABC in Australia.

Re:Finally..

[insertwackynamehere]

L O S T

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:Finally..

[countertrolling]

...everything is known to cause cancer in California...

Are you saying that this nano thingy will consume the whole state?

Re:The good.. and bad?

[DigiShaman]

Could come in the water supply along with fluoride you already get. Maybe not in the USA, but some nation on this planet will think it's a good idea.

Politicians get special bottled water to enhance their genome however.

This was already posted on /. 2 days ago!

[Vapor8]

Must be a slow evening; this article was posted 2 days ago here on /.

http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/03/22/175200/RNA-Loaded-Nanoparticles-Fight-Cancer?art_pos=1

Re:This was already posted on /. 2 days ago!

[Gumby]

And that time they spelled Caltech correctly!

Re:Too small a sample size

[electrons_are_brave]

I know someone going through chemo/radium therapy for an inoperable cancer with a very poor prognosis at the moment, so the side effects would need to be something as dire as a patient explosion or the nanos breeding, mutating and eating us all alive before this would be rejected.

damn it...

[alobar72]

I quit yesterday :-(

Re:The good.. and bad?

[nycguy]

Politicians get special bottled water to enhance their genome however.

Most politicians I know could use some genetic enhancement...

Re:Coming soon

[GaryOlson]

Thanks for that....I look at the hordes of people wondering by and hope I don't need a waitress to defend me.

Re:Isn't this...

[DJRumpy]

How long before this technology can be tuned to other types of infected cells like HIV?

From TFA: "The 70-nanometer attack bots—made with two polymers and a protein that attaches to the cancerous cell's surface—carry a piece of RNA called small-interfering RNA (siRNA), which deactivates the production of a protein, starving the malign cell to death."

Seems like once they know how to write the write 'key' for it to attach to a cell wall, the rest should be fairly do-able?

The first? Hardly...

[QuietLagoon]

Abraxis BioScience is a fully integrated biotechnology company dedicated to delivering progressive therapeutics and core technologies that offer patients and medical professionals safer and more effective treatments for cancer and other critical illnesses. The Abraxis portfolio includes the world's first and only protein-based nanoparticle chemotherapeutic compound (ABRAXANE) which is based on its proprietary tumor targeting system known as the nab(TM) Technology platform. From the discovery and research phase to development and commercialization, Abraxis BioScience is committed to rapidly enriching the company's pipeline and accelerating the delivery of breakthrough therapies that will transform the lives of the patients who need them.

.

Abraxis has been around for, literally, years.

Re:Too small a sample size

[Benbrizzi]

Obligatory PhD comic

Re:Finally..

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCK YES. Only in the perversion known as "the human condition" would something as pleasurable as smoking be lethal.

Re:Isn't this...

[nacturation]

The basis of I Am Legend (the movie) was the modification of a virus to selectively treat cancer. Unless these "nano-bots" learn to replicate themselves, I think we'll be alright.

To prevent that, we'll simply engineer them with a lysine deficiency.

The perfect eugenics tool?

[vell0cet]

This is awesome... except... they say that they can target any gene and protein. This would make a very useful weapon if you wanted to target a specific genotype. Say a particular family. Wasn't that an episode of ST:TNG?

Re:The perfect eugenics tool?

[SteveFoerster]

Wasn't transparent aluminum an episode of ST:TNG?

Not quite. It was an important plot point in Star Trek IV (the one with whales).

Re:The good.. and bad?

[Anarki2004]

That's what fluoride is for, silly!

Re:Isn't this...

[nacturation]

It also goes to show how a carefully engineered nano-particle can be used to kill people in a rather covert way.

Parthos, a la Yuta!

Re:Isn't this...

[cmiller173]

I hear the "blood brain barrier" is pretty vital. I wonder if there is something common to all cells that could be a target marker... I'm thinking along the lines of what happened to the senator in the second x-men movie, make all the cells lose cohesion. and wear galoshes.

That's because of a stupid law...

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

> everything is known to cause cancer in California... I could never figure it out, so I just stay away from California.

Everything says it causes cancer because of Proposition 65. Basically, if something in California is known to cause cancer (even only if ingested by the ton), you have to label it, or lawyers can sue you under a "private attorney general" law. In theory it might be a good idea, but it was implemented so that the defendant has the burden of showing that it's basically impossible to the nth degree that the thing could cause cancer in the quantities you're talking about.

This resulted in a lot of litigation where basically lawyers went around everywhere and said "Oh! You have flame-retardant furniture! Did you know it can cause cancer if you lick it?" "You're a dentist! You use drugs that can cause cancer if you administer them for a week and you didn't post a notice!"

This resulted in a plethora of notices to prevent lawsuits--notices which the public ignores because they're on everything. So in the cases where the warning is actually important, it gets ignored because there are so many.

IIRC, there have been some efforts by the AG (and some courts) to limit abuse.

Re:That's because of a stupid law...

[L4t3r4lu5]

We have a similar thing in the UK with allergies.

I have a pack of peanuts at home which states "This package may contain traces of nuts." and I've eaten numerous hazelnut chocolate bar which has the phrase "Manufactured in a plant which handles nut products." or "Cannot guarantee nut free."

I wouldn't mind, but the last time my brother ate a peanut he couldn't breathe unaded. These warnings help nobody, and are all about litigation prevention. It makes me angry.

(On a lighter note, I've had boxes of cakes which say "Do not turn upside down" on the bottom of the box!)

Re:That's because of a stupid law...

[blackest_k]

While there is some sillyness in the products you talk about , Hazel nut flavour perhaps has no hazelnut in it and would be safe for your brother.
Crisps and nuts and wheat and starch based products tend to be made on the same site tends to use similar equipment. Sometimes even the same equipment. So there is a genuine danger from what you might see as safe products.

Some factories don't use nuts at all so one brand of crisps might be safe for your brother while another brand could kill him. which do you prefer russian roulette or the warning? Chances are there is a standardized industry labeling for nut hazards probably legally mandated which means a packet of probably safe crisps gets the same label as a packet of peanuts.

Labeling tends to be strictly controlled.
 

Re:That's because of a stupid law...

[David Gerard]

Peanuts are, of course, not nuts but legumes. You could theoretically make a nut-free peanut bar.

Re:The good.. and bad?

[izomiac]

Two reasons really. First, there's no such thing as the "obedience gene", the "selfish gene", the "criminal gene", or the "alcoholic gene", that's the media oversimplifying; it'd be like rewiring a single transistor in your computer and expecting it to add a feature to a specific program. Second, even if it were scientifically possible, there's no government that could pull it off, it'd be a massive project that'd go way over budget and be discovered when it fail spectacularly.

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

Hey, let's celebrate:

[mcneely.mike]

Break out the cuban cigars and pass me a diet Pepsi... sure you can smoke 'em if you got em! Cancer, smancer.... i eat urea formaldehyde foam insulation for breakfast!

Re:CmdrTaco's hung like a toddler

[tzanger]

Any technology which is distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.

Why have there been so many Duplicate stories?

[virtualXTC]

I swear I've seen 2 duplicate stories a week for the past month or so: http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/03/22/175200/RNA-Loaded-Nanoparticles-Fight-Cancer?art_pos=19

Hopefully this works on Metastatic cancer

[NotSoHeavyD3]

Since currently if you have metastasis most of the time it's incurable.(If you're lucky you'll just be a chronic cancer victim.)

Re:Too small a sample size

[Sechr Nibw]

But the GP is Barny. And he loves you. Don't you love him? Can't you just be a happy family?

Re:Isn't this...

[Michael Kristopeit]

The basis of I Am Legend (the movie) was the modification of a virus to selectively treat cancer. Unless these "nano-bots" learn to replicate themselves, I think we'll be alright.

don't let wil wheaton anywhere near them!

It is spelled Caltech NOT CalTech

[Gumby]

http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13334

If you cannot spell Caltech properly - please turn in your nerd card.

Simply Awesome

[The Yuckinator]

Smoke 'em if you've got 'em!

Re:Too small a sample size

[BenVis]

Thanks for the overview of the clinical trials procedure. You clearly know a lot about it. One thing I wanted to point out is that while placebo-controlled designs are probably the most reliable, in many contexts (including a cancer treatment) it would be unethical to give patients a placebo (i.e. a treatment expected to do nothing) rather than a treatment that might actually help them.

Basically, if there is a treatment that is known to be at least somewhat effective, that's your control rather than a placebo. It might be that the definition of placebo has shifted to include any standard non-experimental treatment, but that would be news to me.

Re:Isn't this...

[AmigaMMC]

Yeah sure, and one morning we wake up and we are Borg.

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.

More technical article

[syncopated]

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2010/March/21031001.asp

Re:More technical article

[ninnie9]

From Nature, the advance online publication. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08956.html [nature.com]

Re:Too small a sample size

[Puff of Logic]

Phase III trials in this situation would assess the efficacy of this treatment relative to the current standard of care. The whole point of phase III is to figure out whether the drug is at least as effective as the current standard and, as you correctly state, it would be medically unethical to administer a placebo treatment to a cancer patient.

Immortality anyone?

[Raystonn]

Wonderful. Now that we can destroy cancer cells, where can I sign up to have my telemeres refreshed? I'm not getting any younger here... yet.

Re:Too small a sample size

[Anonymous Coward]

It's kind of morbid to think that a cancer patient would receive a placebo and be told it was a cure.

Is nanotech the new asbestos?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/05/nanotechnolog-1.html

Re:Isn't this...

[Toutatis]

How long before this technology can be tuned to other types of infected cells like HIV?

Maybe It can be tuned to attack HIV but HIV is a virus and virus use our own healthy cells and its resources.

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.

Maybe we will look back on this time...

[Arancaytar]

...as the point when the Diamond Age really began.

This is amazing. The future is going to be pretty cool!

Re:CmdrTaco's hung like a toddler

[chromas]

sufficiently advanced is a relative term

That's the point.

Re:The good.. and bad?

[phorm]

Or some nutball might come up with a way to target individuals with given genetic backgrounds for termination/sterilization etc. Einstein never anticipated the A-bomb, after all. Hopefully nobody will find a way to mis-use this technology

Re:Isn't this...

[c0mpliant]

Sir, the man was killed by tiny Nano particles
Hmmm, I guess...
In the end...
It is the little things that matter

Re:Too small a sample size

[aussie_a]

Barney loves you alright.

Re:Isn't this...

[innerweb]

True, but an infected cell and the virus itself contain unique genes that could be utilized.

Re:Isn't this...

[KDR_11k]

If it is detected it doesn't give you plausible deniability, killer nanobots aren't likely to be produced everywhere. A neat dose of botox would be very deniable, for example.

Re:Finally..

[KDR_11k]

In fact, forget the NIMH, I'll take just the LSD.

Re:The good.. and bad?

[uncanny]

it's got siRNA, it's what plants crave!

real article

[cinnamon colbert]

this url takes you to the real article
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08956.html
As a scientist who works in biotech, I am amazed at how credulous slashdot is about biotech stuff; i guess it is because most /.s are not biologists, so they don't understand how far from a treatment this sort of thing is; This is great science, and an important step forward, but it is a long, long way from an FDA approved treatment.

Re:CmdrTaco's hung like a toddler

[toastar]

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.

so It's magic to anyone who watches fox news

Next stop

[wcrowe]

Weaponize it.

Re:Too small a sample size

[Leafheart]

These trials are placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blind studies (the hallmark of research). Statistical analysis then allows you to determine if the therapy was effective in improving outcomes.

You know, I know it is necessary to have the control group, and more important to not have them be know. But in case of diseases like cancer, it must be a bloody hellish thing to be one of the placebo users.

Re:Isn't this...

[dougisfunny]

http://ingresstech.com/~bernard/instantCSI/

Re:blood brain barrier is not...

[dougisfunny]

Or just make the particle target the blood brain barrier itself.

seti

[hort_wort]

So does this mean I can switch back to SETI@Home? What has the next priority?

I am living in the future!

[Buzz_Litebeer]

Seriously, every day when I realize I am living in a near future science fiction novel I become a bit happier.

I am just glad we have avoided the need for blade runners... so far.

Why are we "testing" this?

[Trailer Trash]

Seriously. What's the worst that it's going to do to a person? Kill him?

Well, guess what? They have cancer.

Geeze, get this in everybody who has cancer right now.

Re:The good.. and bad?

[Belial6]

Einstein never anticipated the A-bomb, after all.

This is why I always laugh at people who use quotes from Einstein on social issues. The A-Bomb is pretty much indisputable proof that Einstein was a brilliant physicist, by a complete moron in sociology.

Re:Targeting

[sartin]

Yes, I'm being pedantic but this is /. after all. Granted, targeting may have a more specific meaning

You are being pedantic and it is your definition that is overly specific. Target doesn't mean "point at and hit". For example, my dictionary (Dictionary.app) includes the following:

an objective or result toward which efforts are directed

Nanoselves

[CopaceticOpus]

This is only the beginning. I'd be surprised if, in the next 20-500 years, we don't all have nano particles in our blood streams which:

• Monitor our systems in fine detail, alerting us to conditions very early in their onset
• Target and eliminate cancer and some diseases before they can gain a foothold
• Clear arteries
• Slow or stop effects of aging
• Increase muscle, reduce fat, enhance flexibility, balance hormones

Now, see the video

[forgot_my_username]

I have two videos (stolen..... er... borrowed from youtube) that show how siRNA works and protein synthesis.... as a little refresher.
the link is : siRNA + Protein Synthesis, with article attached :P

Re:Too small a sample size

[Issarlk]

I wouldn't want to be one of the guys in phase III given placebos to cure his cancer !

Breaking News

[earlymon]

Possible Cancer Cure Announced!

Slashdotters Transform Announcement into Wanton Pleas for Women!

Film at 11.

Re:CmdrTaco's hung like a toddler

[Iman Azol]

Like my friends the biochemists and physicists?

Nanoparticles and Transferrin receptor

[drkim]

Nanoparticles and Transferrin receptor, Simplified diagram:
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/comment/4/2010/03/a24330d4c386a394de94deac3aeb8e7a/original.png