Slashdot Mirror
Injecting Liquid Metal Into Blood Vessels Could Help Kill Tumors
KentuckyFC (1144503) writes One of the most interesting emerging treatments for certain types of cancer aims to starve the tumor to death. The strategy involves destroying or blocking the blood vessels that supply a tumor with oxygen and nutrients. Without its lifeblood, the unwanted growth shrivels up and dies. This can be done by physically blocking the vessels with blood clots, gels, balloons, glue, nanoparticles and so on. However, these techniques have never been entirely successful because the blockages can be washed away by the blood flow and the materials do not always fill blood vessels entirely, allowing blood to flow round them. Now Chinese researchers say they've solved the problem by filling blood vessels with an indium-gallium alloy that is liquid at body temperature. They've tested the idea in the lab on mice and rabbits. Their experiments show that the alloy is relatively benign but really does fill the vessels, blocks the blood flow entirely and starves the surrounding tissue of oxygen and nutrients. The team has also identified some problems such as the possibility of blobs of metal being washed into the heart and lungs. Nevertheless, they say their approach is a promising injectable tumor treatment.
What about Coley's Toxins?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coley%27s_Toxins
Well, The side effect might be you're going to die a horribly painful dead, but hey at least you're free from that god awful cancer...
Those tumors could be terminated.
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Try the baklava!
this won't do well in primate/human safety trials.
I don't suppose anything will work at later stages where the cells are everywhere... especially not that.
Possible wolverine on the horizon?
...Robert Patrick simply smiled impishly as he replied, "no comment."
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Having blobs of liquid metal flowing to the heart seems like a show stopper to me. I'm intrigued by the old-school-mad-scientist aspect of this idea, but the potential risks seem a bit serious.
If something goes awesome will these trial patients end up like Wolverine or "the Terminator2000"?
More like that...
"Have you seen this boy?"
I'm guessing that they're talking about benign tumours - how would this work with a malignant tumour or metastatic cancer?
If you get the chance, watch "Autopsy - Life & Death". It's a bit gory, but well worth it for the explanation in one episode about the difference between benign and metastatic tumours.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
Lots of things are relatively benign compared to cancer -- but I'm not sure this is one of them.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Aside from the risks of what happens to the liquid metal after it's done its job, you also end up with a big lump of dead cells inside the body, which can't be good. On the other hand, presumably successful radiation therapy has the same result, and the result doesn't have to be 'good', it just has to be 'better than having a tumor'. Would someone with actual medical knowledge care to comment?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
I'm a radiology resident who is at least moderately familiar with embolic agents.
We already have a liquid embolic agent that solidifies slowly called Onyx. It is only approved for arteriovenous malformations in the central nervous system, but it is used off label for other indications, including tumor embolization: http://www.ajnr.org/content/34... [American Journal of Neuroradiology]. The English on the actual liquid metal article is pretty rough and I soon grew tired of trying to decipher it, but from what I did manage to read I cannot see this doing anything better than Onyx already does.
With regards to embolization to the heart and pulmonary arteries, this happens occasionally with any embolic agent. The cardiovascular system, like the internet, is a series of tubes and the pulmonary capillaries are a fine network of blood vessels that routinely catch tiny blood clots without you even noticing it. It's big emboli that you need to worry about.
So having mercury in my blood could be good for me?
Qian and co first tested the cytotoxicity of gallium and indium by allowing cells to grow in its presence and measuring the number that survive after 48 hours. If more than 75 per cent, a substance is deemed safe by China’s national standards.
After 48 hours just over 75 percent of cells in both samples were still alive
The experiments also reveal a number of potential problems, however. X-rays of the rabbit they injected clearly show that blobs of liquid metal found their way to the animal’s heart and lungs.
What’s more, their experiments also show blood vessel growth around the blocked arteries, revealing how quickly the body adapts to blockages.
At least it's easy to conduct research in China. Maybe they'll find something.
What I want to know is, why didn't they try wax or oil first?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
one step close to having metal bonded to bone, or having iron man style heart problems ;p
When all you need is Rick Simpson Oil
I mailed beta-feedback@slashdot.org a while ago using a single-use mail address. Now I get recruitment spam.
Beta is bad, spam is worse.
Isn't it illegal to send commercial mail without opt-in? What can I do about this?
What? What?
Perhaps a magnetic field could secure the position of a liquid metal alloy thus insuring that it doesn't drift to an unfortunate location.
When you see a claim that a common drug or vitamin "kills cancer cells in a petri dish," keep in mind: So does a handgun.
Warning: source is another fucking annoying medium.com article
Turn you into Wolverine. Or so I've been told.
Maybe Induction coils can be used to position the metal, and keep it from migrating to other organs.
I'm going to wait until someone who isn't essentially gambling with their patients' lives without informed consent can review these findings.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It was discovered already in the 1930's by Otto Heinrich Warburg, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for his discoveries, that unlike normal healthy cells, cancer cells require glucose to survive. Switching to a ketonic diet and lowering your carbohydrate intake and glucose in your blood will starve cancer cells, and is probably a safer thing to try before you decide to inject toxic chemicals or liquid metals into your blood stream.
Yea well, the cancer cells die when the body dies.
As I'm getting older, I want to say that I do not give my consent to have sodium metal injected. It might be a bit dangerous.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
We cured your husband's cancer but we accidentally vegetablised him by blocking a few veins in his brain with liquid metal.
baking soda / bicarbonate cures cancer
Since 30 years I always read the same BS in the MSM: that we have some new cure and it will take several years to come on the market, in the meantime chemo/radiation therapy is pushed, which destroys the immune system and doesn't actually cure cancer.
Cancer can't survive in an alkaline environment, here's the study:
http://www.echtekrant.be/gezon...
Just a tea spoon of bicarbonate in a glass of water every day is enough to make the body alkaline so tumors can't survive.
Terminator 2 called and claimed the patent rights on killing...
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Dear God, why didn't we think of this sooner? It seems like great inventions are always like that -- so obvious that they're hiding in plain sight. It's like the paperclip, or One Click Payments! Obviously this got the old mental juices flowing, so here are some other things that I'm pretty sure can kill tumors:
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Will the side effects simply lead to death in another way?
Will the quality of the time bought, if any, be worth it?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Weapon X!!!!
Thank you, I'll be here all week. Give my regards to Logan.
Killing the host would in fact kill the cancer.
I've worked with that stuff before and I'm thinking: what the hell gave them that idea?
This was judged to be completely ethical and safe by scientist.
Dr. Maurau
Dr. Jeckel
Dr. Frankenstein.
And after your treatment you must be outfitted with an electro-magnet in your chest to keep the shrapn... er, metal blobs from moving into your heart.
"So this other guy: he's a cancer treatment like you, right?"
"Not like me. Indium-Gallium, advanced prototype."
"You mean more advanced than you are?"
"Yes. A mimetic poly-alloy."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Liquid metal."
Why is every article on The Physics arXiv Blog posted on Slashdot ?
President Roslin's cancer *was* cured by cylon fetus blood. Just sayin.
semper ubi sub ubi