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Researchers Develop Cancer-Targetting Hybrid Molecule (medicalxpress.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the molecular-physiques dept.

New York researchers have developed a hybrid molecule that can target cancer cells, which they believe shows promise in the fight against breast cancer. The team created a composite nanoparticle that can transport chemotherapeutic agents, in a technique that more than doubled the uptake of an anti-inflammatory compound that inhibits cancer cell growth when directly applied to a tumor. The composite nanoparticle "can load up with these drugs, carry them to malignant cells, and unload them where they can do the most damage with the least amount of harm to the patient," according to a statement from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, with one of the researchers summarizing it as a hybird molecule that "can carry higher payloads, enabling it to deliver more drug."

17 comments

  1. Regrets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That prophylactic double mastectomy.

    1. Re:Regrets by BitZtream · · Score: 0

      The best part is that both of you guys think you're funny. Thats the best part of your jokes.

      What does that tell you about them?

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    2. Re:Regrets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, it'll be 50 years before the FDA allows clinical trials, and another 50 before it is approved for use. For now we need to keep cutting off the boobies.

    3. Re:Regrets by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      OR...planning a vacation in India to have the treatment.

  2. Publicize or Perish by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Research is worth nothing without the media connections to promote it. Merit, "innovation", or actually working at all simply doesn't enter into things Darling.

  3. Inhibit growth != sustainable solution by mark-t · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Okay, so they can slow the growth rate of the tumor, perhaps even to levels such that the tumor might not even be technically malignant anymore, but it's still there... taking up space in the body, and waiting to become malignant again if its growth should ever resume, presumably some time after treatment has stopped. The cancerous cells still need to be removed from the body, and would require a lumpectomy, at least. Honestly, I'm not sure what significant advantages this offers for breast cancer in the first place. A real revolution would be something that non-invasively eradicates cancer cells while the leaving healthy ones intact and unaffected.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    1. Re:Inhibit growth != sustainable solution by Livius · · Score: 2

      As usual, "journalists" are overstating the results, but it's still progress. Someday it may be the basis of an effective treatment.

    2. Re:Inhibit growth != sustainable solution by ThePyro · · Score: 1

      Plenty of tumors are inoperable. If treatment can delay growth while simultaneously improving quality of life (i.e. by not causing unpleasant side effects associated with other forms of chemotherapy), then surely that's a worthwhile goal?

      We can't exactly cure HIV, either, but modern drugs allow infected individuals to live for years longer than they used to.

    3. Re:Inhibit growth != sustainable solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So If I paint or inject a cancer with DMSO - the same stuff that allows needle-less injections - which one is better? Then hit it with the anti cancer agent? Certainly DMSO can be purchased cheaply at any garden centres,
      What after the absorption phase one paints the exposed cancer with an agent that is the opposite of DMSO so the medicine stays in or on the cancer?
      All silly, as any surgeon would cut the cancer out if exposed, bar obvious exceptions.

  4. Speed it up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The problem with all this stuff is that it takes years to get to human testing. We desperately need a speed up through simulation. We tech-guys should be able to help with that.

    1. Re:Speed it up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Isn't that what the whole @home thing was about? Cloud computing using everybody's spare processor cycles to solve complex problems?

      I haven't heard anything about one of these things in years though, what happened to them?

    2. Re:Speed it up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tech is not the solution to every problem. The reason it takes so long is because biology is extremely complex to understand, which means that it's extremely difficult to understand the side effects and control mechanisms for a therapeutic like this without doing extensive research. Each step, and there could be 10 to 100 steps depending on the therapy, requires a different project and usually an academic funding mechanism to get the project started; the grant cycle can take months in each step. Then it's take data, analyze results, and publish findings to initiate the next step.

      You could skip all the steps and go straight to therapy, but you risk introducing a drug with more harmful side effects than benefits and causing many more problems than it solves, so that's not going to happen. Tech can't speed up the funding process from the government because that's all regulations and legal stuff, tech can't fix the government. You can't commercialize the drug without clinical trials, tech has tried to speed those up a lot but they still take years to understand the long term effects of a new molecule introduced to a human body, tech can't speed that up.

      Biology is far to complex for tech to come even close to modeling or improving, and directly interfacing biology with electronics and integrating with tech doesn't work easily; the materials used in tech tends to poison biology or be coroded by biology. So they're separate spheres without a lot of overlap.

    3. Re:Speed it up! by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      "Isn't that what the whole @home thing was about? Cloud computing using everybody's spare processor cycles to solve complex problems?"

      Except that all those extra processor cycles once being used for protein folding are now being used to mine Bitcoin.

  5. Whoops by rebelwarlock · · Score: 2

    On my first read of the headline, I mistook that hyphen for an em dash and thought, "What the fuck, guys?"

  6. Sexist/biased research? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Breast cancer is already a highly treatable & survivable condition, lung & bronchus cancer isn't. Call me when these researchers decide to target one of the most deadly cancers (lung & bronchus) still without effective treatment.

    This is in no way to suggest that breast cancer is 'curable' across the board but in deciding to spend money on researching & trying to treat diseases perhaps we should target those that kill at a gross rate rather than merely a 'concerning' rate.