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

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."

Comments

Inhibit growth != sustainable solution

[mark-t]

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.

Re:Inhibit growth != sustainable solution

[Livius]

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

Whoops

[rebelwarlock]

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