"Mini-Factories" To Make Medicine Inside the Body

Diggester writes "A group of scientists from MIT and the University of British Columbia have created 'mini-factories' that can be programmed to produce different types of proteins, and when implanted into living cells, it should distribute those proteins throughout the body. The scientists have initially triggered these 'factories' into action through the use of a laser light to relay the message of which proteins to produce."

Comments

Pharmaceutical Lobbyists

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait until the pharmaceutical lobbyists get our clueless lawmakers to make protein synthesis illegal.. Then, the next step will be to make the lymphatic system illegal too. Illegal copying of cells is a violation of copyright law.

Re:Pharmaceutical Lobbyists

[MagusSlurpy]

You realize who's going to make a killing manufacturing these nanofactories, right? The pharmaceutical industry. Even more amusingly, look at who funds the facility where most of the research took place. Yes, those Koch Brothers.

Go pander your conspiracies somewhere else.

I wonder..

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they could make these factories produce insulin, dependent on concentration of glucose? That would be cool for diabetics.

Re:I wonder..

[FreedomOfThought]

Except I think it mightn't be necessary since there is another, more efficient, idea that seems to be promising.

Re:I wonder..

[slazzy]

Insulin is a protein like many hormones so I'm sure this is something they are thinking about.

Nanohives

[WillDraven]

Did anybody else think of nanohives from Shadowrun when they read the title?

Re:Nanohives

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Its definetely moving into a cyberpunk future. /slap on mirrorshades

Wow, it's like a simple cell

[NotSoHeavyD3]

I mean how a cell (like bacteria) have a bit of DNA, mechanism to transcribe that to RNA and use rhibosomes to translate that into a protein. This thing does similar stuff except it isn't designed to replicate itself. Hmm, I don't have access to the original though, what does it use for energy to do all of this? (Since a cell might use a mitochondria to do cellular respiration. Ok, a bacteria doesn't have those but it can do something similar.)

Re:Wow, it's like a simple cell

[glk572]

skimmed the O, what they've done is combine two methods; essentially they've created an artificial cell wall and populated it's innards with the cellular machinery from e. coli bacteria. then they've introduced a piece of dna for the protein they're looking for. the factory claim comes from claims that the hybrid cells can still produce proteins under turbulence of the blood stream.
as far as i can tell they don't know where the energy is coming from, the action dies out after around 24 hours. these letters are usually incremental publications, it's very short and excludes most of the details, this may be just experimental error, there's no reason to suspect that this is potentially superior to conventional mab techniques, or is in any way safe to use in vivo. they look like they're looking for a mechanism right now, but this is mostly academic work, basic research, and most of all ignores the complexity of the mammalian immune system.
this is being published now for the sake of shopping it around for more grant money. if you want the O and can figure out how to get me your email, i can send a limited number of copies.

nice job reframing

[khipu]

Don't get me wrong, this is a nice achievement.

But calling this "mini-factories", "programming", and "nanotechnology" is a clever reframing to make a combination of standard molecular biology techniques that are very far from actual medical use appear more hip and high tech.

I smoke like crazy and wouldn't want that!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not going to happen and you wouldn't want arbitrary amounts of THC in your system all the time either.
I know.. I'm on week 8 of my toke break and starting to be able to do some work again. Couldn't sit down
and type for a long while, was about to lose my job. I started getting better by week 6. Even THC is not
something you want to abuse too much, it is fat solvable and stored in body fat and I still feel like I'm
high sometimes.

Don't get me wrong, THC is still an infinitely superior alternative to anything big pharma wants to put into
you, it is a fantastic anti-depressant, controls blood pressure, moderates your immune-system (if it's too
depressed it ramps it up, if it is switched on "too high" it dampens it just like Vitamin D3 does incidentally)
and gives you anti-government thoughts and other insights into life and the universe. On the downside it
can build up in your system, destroy your concentration and it takes away your dreams during REM which
may be a huge issue all by itself. It also makes you superlazy. I know. I've smoked A LOT and at some point
the dosage you need to get high enough is also the dosage that gives you negative side effects. However that
is me smoking weed like some people smoke cigarettes so any anti-marijuana zealots lying out their asses,
don't quote me for I understand the upsides and downsides none to well both from having consumed it
and from having stopped it.

I'm week 8 of the toke break out of 12 and no there are no huge withdrawal effects (as it is still released in
my system slowly), I got no huge cravings for it and I'm quiet a bit more active and yes dreams have come
back. I'm also slightly less lazy probably coming down to my natural ingrained level of laziness at this point.
Oh I'll be back to smoking in a few weeks, on the weekends after dark because I do not want to miss out
either on the health benefits nor of course on getting high every so often but one thing I know for sure is
I would not want anything in my system that produces THC all the time ... like I said there's a downside to it too
if things get out of hand.

Re:Imagine the possibilities!

[BlueStrat]

Just imagine soldiers and ordinary people with implants to make steroids inside the muscles and painkillers dripped directly the bloodstream without all those icky syringes!

I'm imagining an entire populace government-healthcare-mandated to have these laser-controlled nanofactories that can, besides their publicized abilities, also produce mild or heavy tranquilizers, or other mind/mood-altering drugs.

People protesting? Flash a laser and they're not so interested any more...can't really remember what it was they were mad about. Violent mob? Flash, and they fall unconscious. Government/police wants to question someone? Flash, and they get a dose of sodium pentathol or other similar drug. Government wants to set-up someone? Flash, and they get a nice big dose of rohypnol ("rufies") and star in an embarrassing video they don't/can't remember.

There's huge potential for abuse here.

Strat

Re:Cool.

[kermidge]

"DMT is the psychedelic used in LSD."

Uh, no: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lsd

I took plenty of acid '67-'77, ain't no DMT to it. Were occasional rumors some chemists added stuff to their blotter or whatnot, but I never saw any. Helps to know good chemists. ;)

Re:Imagine the possibilities!

[BlueStrat]

I see my post got modded "Troll".

To those who think I'm trolling, I'm not.

Just think for a minute: What kind of wet-dream would it be for the government's "War On Some Drugs & Poor People" types to be able to make it mandatory that everyone's implants time-release constant levels of medications & proteins that would prevent a person from getting "high" from illegal substances? Or even make them violently-ill? They already make pills that make someone violently ill if they drink alcohol to treat alcoholics.

Looking back over the past, do you really trust them not to go that far. or try like hell to? Especially after a few decades?

Who gets to control the implant(s)? Can the control be overridden/hacked? How do you secure that control? How can you be sure that what they tell you it can do is all it can do?

Frankly, without so much security and personal control protections built in that it almost makes it useless for emergency-type patient-unconscious-or-unresponsive scenarios, this concept scares the crap out of me.

Strat

Re:Imagine the possibilities!

[BlueStrat]

t will be fine once we figure out how to Jailbreak ourselves.

Just beware of that "early termination" clause for unauthorized access!! I'd hate for my body chemistry to "get bricked", as it were. ;)

Strat

Re:Imagine the possibilities!

[BlueStrat]

I didn't mod your post but I can see why someone would have flagged it troll. It's a bit snarky. ;-)

I just don't see any "snark" there. Maybe my "snark-ometer" needs recalibration. The only thing I see that someone could get their panties in a twist over is the mention of government-run healthcare as the vehicle for universal mandatory adoption. I simply thought it current, topical, and relevant in keeping with the recent SCOTUS decision.

If that's the case, someone needs to learn to be a little less thin-skinned. It wasn't a political bash. Trust me. Anyone familiar with my past posts would know that, when I DO come down on something, there's no doubt about it. I don't mince words, and I don't mind calling a spade a spade regardless of BS PC etiquette or delicate Liberal/Progressive sensibilities.

This ain't that.

Strat