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Machine That "Uncooks Eggs" Used To Improve Cancer Treatment

Posted by samzenpus on from the closer-to-a-cure dept.

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.

11 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. arrow of time by turkeydance · · Score: 2

    oh, yeah. that's scrambled eggs or something like that.

  2. Hmm by koan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wonder if "untangling" proteins could help with Alzheimers and "Mad Cow?.

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    1. Re:Hmm by rmdingler · · Score: 2
      Sure seems likely. Cataracts and even aging cells, too, one day.

      It's an exciting time to be alive; with quality of life extension, space exploration, and artificial intelligence on the very real scientific horizon.

      If only we can resolve our speciescidal tendencies.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    2. Re:Hmm by EvilSS · · Score: 2

      "speciescidal" - unfortunately, that's a word made up out of thin air.

      As all words are.

      Mind blown!

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    3. Re:Hmm by cjameshuff · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Hmm by ljw1004 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Wonder if "untangling" proteins could help with Alzheimers and "Mad Cow?.

      There are two main theories about Alzheimers. The dominant theory is that it's caused by beta-amyloid protein which forms plaques. The minority theory is that it's caused by tau protein which forms long filaments called "tangles"; these tangles gum up the neuron and eventually cause it to burst. http://taurx.com/tau-tangles-i...

      My father during his PhD discovered that a common dye, methylene blue, causes those filaments to untangle. He formed a small pharmaceutical company to pursue this idea. They tweaked the chemical a bit, including with heavy duty computer number-crunching to simulate its 3d structure and mode of interaction. They had great results in Phase 2 trials, and their Phase 3 trials are currently underway. Fingers crossed.

      That said, Alzheimers disease is a graveyard of pharmaceutical funding. $18+ billion dollars put into drug trials so far (not just "foundational research"), primarily on the beta-amyloid hypothesis, but with nothing yet to show.

    5. Re:Hmm by bayankaran · · Score: 4, Informative

      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
  3. Solving the delivery bottleneck by Chikungunya · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There are a lot of medical interventions that are very nice on paper but useless in practice because of the difficulty of delivering something fragile to a specific point in the body. This super-vesicles seem to be still too limited to address this problem perfectly but they seem like a big step forward, a couple of generations later this could very well make gene-therapy, siRNA inhibition, cell-specific drug therapies, etc. practical enough to be used as therapy.

  4. Re:speciescide is well within google search parame by Whiteox · · Score: 2

    There is nothing wrong with Cromulency if used correctly.

    --
    Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
  5. Re:speciescide is well within google search parame by jsilver212 · · Score: 2

    There is nothing wrong with Cromulency if used correctly.

    No there's'nt any problem I see with re-tensing and such, only with the misplaced capital letter on "Cromulency".

  6. Lipid formulations of cancer drugs exist by ponos · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.