Nanomaterials Used in Possible Cancer Cure

Moiche writes "Medical researchers at CalTech and the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles have successfully inhibited cancer growth in mice by wrapping engineered RNA in nanomaterials and introducing them into the bloodstream. Two polymers and a special coating allow the therapeutic RNA to enter the cancer cell and release the therapeutic RNA payload. The new technique has slowed or prevented the development of secondary tumors in lab mice with Ewing's sarcoma. Further testing is planned on humans, and with other cancers. The Diamond Age seems closer, day by day."

Excellent

[by Anonymous Coward]

So now, nanobots not only can defeat the Borg, but they can also cure cancer. W00t!

In a perfect world

[thundercatslair (809424)]

A good friend of mine found out today that she has inflammatory breast cancer (IBC). I would like to belive that a technology like this could help her, but I don't think that she will ever get that chance.

Re:In a perfect world

[by Anonymous Coward]

Hey, the article say they were treating mice. I've heard plenty of these stories, I lost count years ago. Every month there's some fantastic new scientific development in cancer research, almost always involving mice or rats, or pigs or some animal other than human beings.

Cancer researchers should keep quiet till they've found a fucking cure. Frederick Banting didn't stir up media attention 20 years before he discovered insulin with crazy stories, "Hey, diabetics, just hold on for another few years.. I'm a

Re:In a perfect world

[punchie1 (882511)]

I am a medical oncologist and wanted to clear up the fact that inflammatory breast cancer is the worst type of breast cancer to have. Very aggressive treatment can get it under control but it has a very high rate of relapse. I hate being the bearer of bad news, but your friend should make sure that she is receiving state of the art combined modality therapy.

Re:In a perfect world

[bmalnad (808193)]

The following information came from the Discovery Health web site [discovery.com]:

"Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC), which can also be Stage stage III or Stage stage IV breast cancer, is the least common but most aggressive type of breast cancer.

While only 1 to 4 percent of newly diagnosed cases are IBC, 60 to 70 percent of all women with the disease do not live five years beyond their diagnosis. "

Re:In a perfect world

[nucal (561664)]

An internist and a surgeon come to an elevator. The door is closing, so the internist inserts his hand.

"Why'd you do that?" asks the surgeon.

"Well," the internist answers, "you use the least important part of your body to stop an elevator door."

They go into another wing, and approach another elevator. It's closing. So the surgeon sticks his head in.

RNAi Technology

[Xeroc (877174)]

This uses RNAi technology - that is the RNA they deploy is complementary to the RNA produced in Cancer Cells, and so they complement with the cancer RNA into a double-stranded piece of RNA - which screams virus - and the cell destroys it. Therefore stopping the growth of the cancer.

This method of using the nanomaterials to protect it and enable it to enter the cancer cells surely looks very promising!

There's several catches

[PIPBoy3000 (619296)]

The tricky part is that each individual cancer must have a particular treatment created for it. It's not a generic cancer cure, but rather one that can be targeted against certain very specific types of cancer. They'd need to know exactly what's genetically wrong with the cell in order to cure it.

Not only that, but if the iRNA sequence not only matches the problem RNA but also a healthy one, you could potentially be interfering with normal gene function. That's why they targeted Ewing's sarcoma, a cancer that "provides a clear and unambiguous target".

Finally, this doesn't seem to actually cure the cancer, but rather puts it into submission. Think of the cancer cell's nucleus spitting out bogus RNA, only to be chopped up by iRNA that matches it. You'd need to take the treatment essentially forever. Drug companies could make billions.

Re:There's several catches

[porcupine8 (816071)]

The tricky part is that each individual cancer must have a particular treatment created for it. It's not a generic cancer cure, but rather one that can be targeted against certain very specific types of cancer.

But that's true of most cancer treatments. You don't just get generic chemotherapy, you get a specific chemo regimen for your specific type of cancer. What works on one type doesn't work on others - which is why some cancers have 80+% survival rates and others are more around 10%.

It is importan

Re:RNAi Technology

[xplenumx (703804)]

Saying that RNAi makes a cell scream "Virus!", and thus destroying the RNA (or cell - you were grossly unclear) is a grossly misleading. RNAi 'knocks down' a gene by complementing the RNA target, leading to the degredation of the target RNA thus knocking down protein expression. Plants have been shown to use RNAi to resist viruses, but that hasn't been shown for mammalian systems (we use toll-like receptors (TLR-3 for dsRNA and TLR-8 for ssRNA specifically) to recognise RNA and induce an interferon respons

Go back and read some more on RNAi Technology

[pesho (843750)]

I can't believe that this comment was scored 5,Informative. It is totaly misleading. The RNA:RNA hybrid does not scream "virus". In fact it goes under the "virus radar" and does not elicit the interferone responce. A more acurate description would be that it hijacks a mechanism that is used in generation of small regulatory RNAs (micro or miRNAs) and results in cleavage of the targed. The biggest achievement of this research is the delivery system which looks very efficient and is the best alternative to vi

Re:God I am pathetic

[simcop2387 (703011)]

i just hope that microsoft doesn't answer that with. either Active RNA or RNA.NET just immagine if spammers get popups in your skin pigments!

Wish this were available Right Now.

[danamania (540950)]

Today I've booked my pet mouse, muis [danaquarium.com] in for surgery to remove her third tumour. The previous surgeries have been successful, but it would be ace not to have her go through a general anaesthetic again.

(I realise this is an important development for fixing human cancers, but as a pet owner - it would be great to have these working fixes for the little ones it's been demonstrated on!)

You're insane

[flyingsquid (813711)]

It's a mouse. In the wild, mice have to deal with an insane number of predators- cats, hawks, owls, snakes and so on. It's not a pretty world, and a mouse is unlikely to survive more than a couple years. The result is that natural selection only acts to increase the survivability of the mouse for the first couple of years. There's no point in selecting for a gene to help a mouse live to ten years, or even five years, because the odds of that gene ever being useful are pretty low when most mice get killed in

Re:You're insane

[porcupine8 (816071)]

WTF, its a mouse. . . . They're just pets.

Having a pet means taking on complete responsibility for a life. You have a responsibility to minimize that life's suffering. If you don't want that responsibility, don't get a pet.

That said, I would personally probably not get more than one surgery for a recurring tumor in a small rodent - I think that the surgeries are likely causing more suffering than necessary, and I would probably just let the second tumor grow until it was obviously causing problems an

Re:You're insane

[weighn (578357)]

shit, this nation needs to get a grip and get a fucking sense of perspective. They're just pets

You nasty, brutal, (but) realistic bastard.

You have managed to capture the essence of everything that I can't stand about myself.

Thank you. I am now a more sensitive, kinder, loving person.
Peace.

Re:You're insane

[flyingsquid (813711)]

You nasty, brutal, (but) realistic bastard.

Honestly, I do feel like a total mean prick bastard for posting this; I could have said the same thing and filed some edges off, I'm sorry. And a hypocrite, since in my life I've invested a lot of emotion in small animals, futile causes, and stuff that does nothing to help the starving Third World.

But what bugs me is that this society seems to have an unhealthy preoccupation with putting death off forever, at any cost. At some point we need to accept the inevitable. Where does it end; do we keep Fido hooked up to feeding tubes in a persistent vegetative state?

And what bugs me is that we seem to forget that we have so much wealth and power and there are so many who don't have jack. Many if not most pets in the United States have a higher quality of life than most human beings in the world: clean water, ample food, shelter, medical care. Isn't that screwed up? What would happen if we spent the same amount on helping other human beings as we did on pet food? It makes me want to be a communist... except they tried that already, and it didn't even work as well as this crazy system.

Win-Win

[TapeCutter (624760)]

Feed the mouse to the starving Africans.

(oooooooh, that was sick, but strangely amusing!).

Re:You're insane

[lakeland (218447)]

Only if you haven't hit puberty yet

Re:You're insane

[gotpaint32 (728082)]

Then what stops someone from injecting themselves with said injections, or popping pills or whatnot. Desperate times often leads very ordinary people to very desperate measures (i.e. injecting yourself with say dog cancer injections after finding yourself diagnosed with testicular cancer only to have the cancer mutate or some other weird side effect like that) in light of that do you really think the FDA really wants to dispense these pet miracle cures like candy?

Re:Wish this were available Right Now.

[justins (80659)]

(I realise this is an important development for fixing human cancers, but as a pet owner - it would be great to have these working fixes for the little ones it's been demonstrated on!

Unfortunately, the treatment is likely to be insanely expensive for humans. There won't be a mouse treatment because recouping the costs of developing the treatment would be effectively impossible.

Re:Wish this were available Right Now.

[danamania (540950)]

Unfortunately, the treatment is likely to be insanely expensive for humans. There won't be a mouse treatment because recouping the costs of developing the treatment would be effectively impossible.

It would, yes. My post was just a bit of wishful thinking & idealism because it's on my mind at the moment - The world isn't meant to be an always-fair and always-just place, but sometimes it's nice to dream.

(although the removal of a mouse tumour is damned cheap when compared to human surgery. $50 and it'

Re:Wish this were available Right Now.

[GreyWolf3000 (468618)]

You, for whining to the GP when you could be spending your time feeding the homeless.

Mice and Men

[by Anonymous Coward]

Mice may save mankind again!

Re:Mice and Men

[Punboy (737239)]

Actually, mice created mankind. It was the dolphins that saved us.

Nanomaterials

[by Anonymous Coward]

The smallest buzzword ever created by Man

Why nanotechnology?

[Husgaard (858362)]

I wonder why they apply some kind of nanotechnology to get the RNA into the cells.

Why not piggyback on nature and use some relatively harmless virus for transporting the RNA into the cells? Would it be too hard to create the virus with the RNA, or to grow the virus without it mutating into something not containing the RNA?

Re:Why nanotechnology?

[ozborn (161426)]

Molecular biologists have been trying to engineer a safe, reliable, effecient method of drug delivery to selected cells for decades. This includes modifying viruses, poxviruses, herpes viruses, adenoviruses,retroviruses, etc.. but they all have problems. Creating the viruses isn't difficult, nor is mutation a serious problem. What is difficult is selectively targetting ONLY the cells you want, getting ALL (or most) of them with a sufficient quantity of whatever agent you are delivering. That's hard.
The big deal about this result isn't RNAi (which people have known about now for several years) but the success in hijacking the transferrin transporter to bring the RNAi in.

Re:Why nanotechnology?

[gotpaint32 (728082)]

As good as all this sounds like for killing cancerous cells, i think the aim of future research should focus more on stem cell technolgies. Cancer doesn't just appear one day, well unless ur genome was corrupt to begin with as in the case with some retinoblastoma patients. Cancer is a usually a slow and silent progression until the point where it explodes out of control. Normally your body does a pretty good job at screening for genetic anomalies during the cell cycle.
Only after the accumulation of a series

Venture capital funding or IPO?

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

Using a virus is sooo 19 hundreds.

OK, I'd love for there to be a cure for cancer, but I suspect that more likely this is just the perfect bunch of buzzwords to hype for funding, IPO or whatever. nanoxxx: tick; cure for cancer: tick.

The last cure-for-cancer stock I watched were Cell Pathways. Lovely rollercoaster stock. Perfect for pump and dump of IPO share options etc.

I feel this is the real answer to solving cancer !

[zymano (581466)]

nanocancer has it's own government website. [cancer.gov]

I believe in this more than virus gene therapy.

You can't let the immune system interfere!

Good stuff. I keep up to date on this .

Science.Slashdot is dying.

[by Anonymous Coward]

This discussion will, most likely, not really go anywhere. Slashdot simply doesn't have many persons these days who are particularly informed on the sciences. What this discussion will contain is:

- Two people who really and actually understand the science and make interesting deep posts
- 15 people who sort of kind of understand the science behind this and make comments which are interesting and good points-- but contain misinformed elements
- 30 people making jokes

Discussions on science.slashdot fall into

Re:Science.Slashdot is dying.

[dmaduram (790744)]

Slashdot simply doesn't have many persons these days who are particularly informed on the sciences.

Although I agree with much of your post, the above statement is *patently* false -- speaking from the academic medical community, I can name several professors, postdocs, and physicians within my university that follow science.slashdot on a regular basis.

Additionally, keep in mind that plenty of people who are specialists simply don't comment because the linked article doesn't provide enough detail. As a

Re:Science.Slashdot is dying.

[hung_himself (774451)]

You make some very good points except there are a lot more science experts here than you might think. I think most of them are lurkers who don't post much. One reason has already been mentioned. Scientists don't really like to comment on things unless they have RTFA and the background and thought about it which is a bit of work even if the topic is in your field of expertise. Secondly, some of the issues brought up are really very complex and it takes a lot of effort to try to give enough background so that the comment makes sense to the non-expert. A third reason is one that you touch upon - the amount of noise - i.e. why would anyone make the effort if they are going to be shouted down?

But, the reason to read /. is not really for science news - you can read Nature or Science for that - but for the unfiltered noise itself. This is one of the best places to get opinions of a large population of fairly intelligent non-experts on current topics of science. While there are a few zealots, I find the /. community as whole to be very receptive to science. They help identify areas where scientists need to spend more time and energy communicating ideas and countering FUD.

We're getting there

[MicroBerto (91055)]

Someday, we're going to think this was quite a crude process, but we're getting there! We're learning how to "program" the body. We're starting to learn how to code ourselves, and with some more breakthroughs, modern medicine will forever be changed just as penicillin changed the world.

During our lifetimes, it will be extremely exciting to see all of this happen. The scary part is how far we take it. Bad things can come of it too.

Re:We're getting there

[kim69 (707440)]

siRNA is the way forward - the big deal here is not the possible cure for cancer, but a delivery route for the RNAi into cells. siRNA is the future of pharmacolology, a specific knockdown of enzymes and proteins without non-specifically inhibiting similar enzymes. The problem with siRNA, which we use very effectively in cell cultures by transfection techniques, is getting the large RNA molecules accross the fatty cell membrane and into the cell where is can do its work.

Previously people have shown that

Polymeric source?

[pbi (760093)]

Strange that they are using PEO and cyclodextrin as a "encapsulating" polymeric source for the transferrin. I would think that PEO would be not very good choice for living cells (cancerous or non-cancerous). If the body needs to digest this polymer, PEO has a history of problems with its by-products. Most of the by-products are ethanol, which would kill the cells. Probably callogen or similar forms would be better. Perhaps, they are already using similar types of polymers.

Re:Polymeric source?

[suchire (638146)]

They're using PEG, and it's known to be fairly inert. It just diffuses out of cells after the chain breaks down, since it's small and nonpolar.

Re:Polymeric source?

[PaulBunion (872807)]

Are you sure that you don't mean PEG?

Please see

http://www.nektar.com/content/advanced_peg [nektar.com]

This stuff could be used to attach to the surface
of transferrin and may have beneficial effects on
it. Also I am a little skeptical of cyclodextrin
encapsulating transferrin. Cyclodextrin is a
donut shaped molecule with a fairly small cavity.
It might hold say cholesterol, but not
a protein.

I assume you meant collagen, in your post. This has its own problems because, depending on its
source, it can be immunogenic.

Source Article

[dmaduram (790744)]

Just as a fyi, the press release for Hu et. al.'s research can be found at the American Association for Cancer Research proceedings [aacr.org] page -- it's more technical than the Economist article linked above, but is quite informative.

not Diamond Age

[cahiha (873942)]

Sorry, but this is standard molecular biology and polymer chemistry, the way it's been done for decades. It has nothing to do with "nanotechnology".

Nanotechnology, as in the Diamond Age, refers to a new class of self-replicating molecular devices. Nanotechnology was overhyped, has delivered no scientific insights, and has been a complete failure. That is why its proponents are now going around and trying to relabel work in material science and biology, work that happens to be at the right scale, as "nanotechnology".

Re:Why is this even necessary?

[Short Circuit (52384)]

"Well established?"

I'd like to see your reference...I've never heard of that position.

Re:Why is this even necessary?

[GreenHead (882493)]

Have you ever tried to changed your internal pH to be alkaline balance? I'm sure you haven't cause you would be dead. The body can only exist in a narrow range of pH to functional properly.

Re:Why is this even necessary?

[mcc (14761)]

Have you ever tried to changed your internal pH to be alkaline balance? I'm sure you haven't cause you would be dead.

In which case it would most definitely be impossible for cancer to form.

The technique works!

Re:Why is this even necessary?

[Cheerio Boy (82178)]

Do you have sources?

I am not claiming that's a fake, I find what you are saying very interesting, but I'd never heard about it!

There seems to be plenty of data but the jury is still out:

Google: cancer+alkaline+PH+balance [google.com]

Great links.

[MarkusQ (450076)]

Great links. Basically various groups of people trying to sell something [healingdaily.com] and various other groups trying to shut them down [fda.gov].

Not exactly "research."

--MarkusQ

Re:How important is this?

[LurkerXXX (667952)]

It also only works on tumors which express a gene which normal cells don't. That's also not true for the vast majority of cancers that we know of.

Re:These kinds of stories are starting to bug me..

[Short Circuit (52384)]

If you even bothered to read the post, you'd see that this treatment has prevented tumor growth.

That's certainly positive evidence, if not proof. Used in combination with treatments like chemo, you've got a good regimen.

Normally, the idea of chemo is to hopefully kill cancer cells faster than they're being produced. Something like this could halt the production, allowing for much faster elimination of cancerous mass, and possibly even a reduction in chemo dose.

Re:These kinds of stories are starting to bug me..

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

Dude, do you realize that electronics 30 years ago were in their infancy? OOooh look, a transistor radio!

Nanotech will grow exponentially just like electronics (expect some Moore Law regarding nanotech to appear soon). Problem is, exponential growth rates are VERY SLOW on the beginnings.

But wait in 10 or 15 years when nanotubes manufacturing is completely understood and industrialized.

Re:how is it different from drugs?

[1337G (563665)]

The idea is that the nanomaterials are delivering RNA that compliments endogenous mRNA - the resulting double stranded RNA is degraded and the protein isn't made. I think TFA mentions that, and if it didn't it should.