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17-Year-Old Wins $100K For Creating Cancer Killing Nanoparticle
An anonymous reader writes "17-year-old Angeloa Zhang was recently awarded the $100,000 Grand Prize in the Individual category of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology. Her project was entitled 'Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells.' The creation is the so-called 'Swiss army knife of cancer treatment,' which allows a nanoparticle to be delivered to a tumor where it proceeds to kills cancer stem cells."
Colitis and Crohn's disease are autoimmune, so yes, they're going to be very difficult to cure. Cancer and AIDS at least have well identified targets. Wipe out all the cancerous cells or virus particles and you're done. Most autoimmune diseases have the complication that you're still not sure exactly what's wrong, and even if you did know, the cells that are causing the problems are usually also necessary for staying alive.
you're right, but I did find the siemens announcement here http://www.siemens-foundation.org/en/competition/2011_winners.htm#2
Because cancer actually refers to a huge group of different diseases. They share the common characteristic of unregulated cell growth but they are distinct diseases nevertheless. Each specific type of cancer don't actually receive disproportionate "newstime and general attention".
This guy did this already in a way I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kanzius But she had the brains to deliver it via the drug (not sure if his particles would be dilviered via the drug but dont see why not). Also he wanted to kill the cancer with radio waves heating the particles, her particels on the worthless biography says nothing about how the particles perform the function (at least that I saw)
Crohn is not an autoimmine disease, it's a bacterial infection, if you wish to call it anything you can say it's an autoinflammatory disease.
The fact that there is still this level of confusion means there needs to be more research.
As far as difficult to cure, it depends on what you mean.
At this point in time it's very likely that Crohn is either E. Coli or MAP. While they are harder to eradicate than tuberculosis or leprosy, since the MAP bug lives deep within intercellular walls, it should be possible with the right antibiotics. There are already tests with TB cocktails that target MAP.
However, there is little interest from the medical industry because these antibiotics are actually not expensive, and giving people infliximab ( makes them a whole lot more.
Many people who have crohn are boosting their immune system (which like I said contradcits the autoimmune theory which is bullocks at this point), Naltrexone has been shown to work for crohn and increase levels of Vitamin D seems to also have a beneficial effect.
Then there are complications, like fibrosis, which need to be looked at also, because it's a very common side-effect when the intestinal walls contract due to scar tissue and increased collagen.
ALL OF THESE THINGS are within reach of being cured, if only there was some money put into them.
The fact that there is still this level of confusion means there needs to be more research.
They identified the MAP bacteria a few years back, but are still discovering SNP's that contribute to the inability to fight it off.
Killing MAP takes a cocktail of antibiotic drugs still. Nasty buggers.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
No, that was actually Australia's taxpayer funded CSIRO. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples where you would be correct but you just happen to be cmpletely wrong with this one.
To make it an even worse example, the HPV vaccine is being held up by some as an example of the price gouging by US companies because despite their costs being equal or less than every other place for that product they charge more for it. Charging what the market will bear is not slimy - pretending that it is to cover the development costs of something where they only have to pay licencing cost is.
Cure cancer, only make 100k
She didn't "win" the money for curing cancer. It was the prize money for the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology. Could have been 100 for any field
While this is technically not a lie, it's at least a very misleading statement that obfuscates the underlying problem. Crohn is a disease of the immune system. Newer research indicates that it might be a deficiency in some immune cells' ability to produce immuno-modulating agents that are needed for a coordinated response to bacteria occuring inside the colon. This allows those bacteria to stage an attack on the colon's tissue. The bacterial infection itself is, however, just a symptom of the immune defect.
She's from Cupertino, California, USA..
pubmed.org is your friend : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21254832
Yes they do, and in exactly the way that the grandparent said. Antibiotics (and antiseptics before them) made a massive change to medicine. The discovery of penicillin turned a large number diseases from always-fatal to mildly irritating. A broad-spectrum antiviral would have a similarly huge impact.
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From TFA http://www.siemens-foundation.org/en/competition/2011_winners.htm#7 linked to by TFA:
Angela Zhang
$100,000
Monta Vista High School, Cupertino, California
MENTOR: Dr. Zhen Cheng, Stanford University
Both of which were in the US last time I looked...
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Nanoparticles are so small they are measured in nanometers (a nanometer is a millionth of a millimeter)
Except that they're off by several orders of magnitude. A nanometre is a billionth (short scale) of a metre: that is, 1/1000000000 (10^-9) metres.
Nanoplatform Based, Combinational Therapy against Breast Cancer Stem Cells University of Georgia Principal Investigator: Jin Xie, Ph.D. Project Summary: This project is based on a novel nanoplatform that is comprised of an iron oxide nanoparticle core, an amine-rich intermediate layer, and an outside coating layer made of human serum albumin. In this project, the iron oxide nanoplatform is loaded with a cocktail of therapeutic agents (paclitaxel, salinomycin, and tariquidar or siRNA that targets MDR-1 gene) and is used to treat breast cancer.
Note that Dr. Xie was working at the same Stanford lab as the girl. Anyone want to place any bets on which one of them was responsible for this project? Of course, bad reporting isn't surprising; we can't expect a reporter to take the time to google "magnetic nanoparticle cancer treatment imaging stanford" and spend a few minutes looking through the results, or some similar feat of heroic investigative super-journalism. No, the interesting thing to me is how when anyone tries to point out that the story is stupid and inaccurate, people invariably freak out and accuse you of being jealous etc. It seems that a great many people can't distinguish between criticizing the child vs. criticizing the work of the reporter who wrote the story about the child.