Slashdot Mirror
Machine That "Uncooks Eggs" Used To Improve Cancer Treatment
hypnosec writes: An Australian invention that gained attention for being able to "unboil" an egg has now been put to use in the treatment of cancer. The device has boosted the potency of a common cancer treatment drug, carboplatino, as much as four-and-a-half-times. ABC.net reports: "Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer director Professor Ross McKinnon said it meant a huge advance for cancer treatment. 'It gives us the promise of offering an alternative where we have more drug being delivered to the tumour and less drug being delivered to the rest of the body,' he said. 'That means less side-effects for the patient and hopefully a much better effect in terms of tumour response. What this group are doing is an example of one drug but we would hope we could extend this to many drugs.' The device can process proteins more efficiently than current methods, with possible big ramifications for the pharmaceuticals industry.
The process involves liquefying the protein-containing material and running it through a fluid vortex that applies strong shear forces to the individual molecules, untangling them and allowing them to refold. This process is likely to be somewhat more detrimental to brain function than the mis-folded proteins were.
In this case, it appears the same shear forces cause the cancer drug to be more likely to get encapsulated in a lipid vesicle, which protects the drug and helps get it past cell membranes. Useful, but not directly applicable to Alzheimer's or prion diseases.
The latest hypothesis is that beta-amyloid (and the plaques) is a result of Alzheimer's, rather than a cause.
http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-04-30/do-we-all-have-alzhemers-completely-wrong-man-says-yes/
Tat Tvam Asi
Lipid formulations of cancer drugs already exist, notably liposomal doxorubicin. Usually these result in better intracellular delivery and less toxicity. The problem is that making stable lipid formulations is quite hard and the resulting product quite expensive. If this, apparently simple, method can create liposomal carboplatin (or whatever other drug), it could allow cheaper and more diverse liposomal anti-cancer drugs. That would be nice. Especially carboplatiin (and cisplatin) are extremely important for many, many different chemotherapy protocols.