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Implant Raises Cellular Army To Attack Cancer
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jan 12, 2009 12:39 PM
from the zombie-medicine dept.
from the zombie-medicine dept.
holy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports on a sneaky new approach to getting the immune system to fight cancer. An implant releases a 'molecular perfume' irresistible to messenger immune cells, which enter the implant where they are given a sample of the cancer's 'scent' and a disperse signal that sends them scurrying to the nearest lymph node. There they convince other immune cells to start attacking anything that matches the sample they picked up."
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uhhh (Score:4, Insightful)
this is pretty amazing to a layman such as myself..
Re:uhhh (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:uhhh (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:2)
Time to quit quitting smoking!
My thoughts exactly... or almost. I was actually thinking:
WooHoo! I DON'T need to quit smoking!
Re:uhhh (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:uhhh (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, except for the whole, smelling like a walking ashtray, coughing up nasty flem, and annoying the hell out of everyone around you thing.
Parent
Re:uhhh (Score:5, Insightful)
And the litter. Too many smokers are too lazy (or something) to use a damned ashtray and just flip their butts out into the world.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The film The Abyss [imdb.com] uses a plot device where the divers use an oxygenated liquid to manage the affects of deep diving. Apparently this is a real world technology. "Researching" this post led me to the article [wikipedia.org] on it.
Given then, that liquids can be used in the lungs over periods of time, what is to stop this liquid having some kind of detergent introduced to it?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Coca Cola isn't pleasant when you inhale it, but look at the cleaning properties. Use O2 instead of CO2 and we could be on a winner.
I also had a thought about how to introduce and remove the liquid without such evil choking as depicted by the film.
A mild anaesthetic could be used in the liquid for a few seconds, invert the patient, then introduce air through the tube. Numbing the trachea should help drainage and removal of
Re:uhhh (Score:5, Informative)
I would want to read a real paper on it in a journal.
If you're that fussy about your sources, at least read down to the bottom of the article to see if they have citations. Like this one:
http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nmat2357.html [nature.com]
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Unfortunately... (Score:4, Interesting)
However after RTA I did see that all of the control group died and the mice with the implant 90% were cured.
I hate to say it, but that's over-interpreting. This appears to have warded off imminent death in the mice, which is a result that is very encouraging. Unfortunately, it likely did not -cure- the mice. When we see data indicating these mice have a 5-year survival which is greater than the control (uh... or whatever the equivalent is since even healthy mice maybe don't live 5 years) then I too will be celebrating.
The immune system would sort of be vaccinated against markers on the cancer cells, but there's no guarantee that every cancer cell will have the marker and will keep it. You can imagine that if 99% of the cells in a tumor do have it, the tumor may be killed by the primed cells, but that 1% that doesn't will repopulate a while later.
Of course, this may have a feedback effect. I'm no immunologist, but I would hazard a guess that if a tumor were being attacked in this manner, the increased activity in the area may start targeting that 1% too. Maybe. That could also be a downside, as you can imagine if the immune system is primed but learns the wrong marker, you suddenly have an autoimmune disease on top of the cancer. Once again, I'm not an immunologist, so I don't know whether that's pure crap or not.
So it's another good finding, and of course a way to fight tumors is a miracle to a patient even if it's not a complete cure. It might be a total cure, but let's not set ourselves up for dissapointment.
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Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why we haven't cured the disease yet. The tumor evolves and all that our treatments do, if they are unable to kill off the entire tumor, is select for cells that are resistant. I'm not an oncologist, although I am involved in medical research, but it seems to me that a more effective strategy would be to select for cells that are specifically weak to conventional treatment prior to administering it. Just as in machine classification*, a combination of individually effective treatments that work in different ways should tend to perform best, especially if resistance to one implies weakness to another.
*Because cancer treatment is really just one big classification problem: you want to kill all of the cancer cells and none of the normal ones. Get the sensitivity to 100% (all cancer cells killed) with a high enough specificity (most normal cells left alone) and you win.
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Re:Unfortunately... (Score:4, Informative)
I hate to say it, but that's over-interpreting. This appears to have warded off imminent death in the mice, which is a result that is very encouraging. Unfortunately, it likely did not -cure- the mice.
"did not -cure- the mice" is an understatement.
FTFA: In tests, the researchers implanted cylinders with a diameter of 8.5 millimetres into mice and two weeks later injected the animals with highly aggressive melanoma cells.
All of this is academic until they can inject the mice with cancer then stick an implant in them and get a 90% cure rate.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"You can imagine that if 99% of the cells in a tumor do have it, the tumor may be killed by the primed cells, but that 1% that doesn't will repopulate a while later".
It seems this new treatment, if able to eliminate 99% of said tumor would work well in combination with current treatments like chemo and radiation where you could then use much lower doses to kill the remaining % with less harm to the patient.
Re:uhhh (Score:5, Insightful)
"Say... your body just starts literally killing ALL cells... cancer and normal... "
How do you think chemotherapy works? Or radiation therapy?
Both treatments kill *all* cells. The idea is to kill the cancer cells *first*, before the treatment kills the patient.
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Re:uhhh (Score:4, Informative)
Both treatments kill *all* cells. The idea is to kill the cancer cells *first*, before the treatment kills the patient.
Not quite. The current generation of drugs do have a tendancy to affect any DIVIDING cells in the body, but not all of them. Big difference, your mature brain cells and your heart muscles should not directly be targeted. The fastest dividing cells in the body will generally be affected the most, that's cancer cell. It also helps that they're less stable than healthy cells and succumb to genomic damage faster. The lining of your gut, your fingernails, hair, and skin are also fast-dividing, they also will be affected, but I believe they divide slower than most cancers, and they are more resillient than cancer cells. There's also a numbers game though, cancer can be beaten back to one cell and still recover, you need most of your stomach lining intact. So you're right in that you should kill the cancer cells before you kill the patient, but it would take an extremely high dose of any chemotherapy to start killing EVERY cell in your body, and you as an organism would be dead at much lower doses.
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I, for one (Score:3, Funny)
welcome our new cellular overlords.
Re:uhhh (Score:5, Interesting)
There has been recent work to treat autoimmune diseases by "erasing" the immune system's "memory" (e.g., memory B cells) by attacking the marrow with chemotherapy, then reseeding the system with harvested haematopoietic stem cells. Here's an example I find after a fast search [clinicaltrials.gov]. Of course, it leaves the patient with 0 immune system while it regenerates from the stem cells, and I'd imagine you'd have to redo all your vaccinations, etc., but I suppose that could do the trick. -- Paul
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One joy of implants is that they can usually be removed if things are not going so well.
That being said there will always be a few people who have very severe and unusual reactions to anything at all. A strawberry, a speck of fish oil, or a touch of tomato or peanut is enough to kill certain people. Very high tech. products are not different in that respect. Even the very best items will always be lethal to someone, somewhere. That does not imply that those p
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only that, but you can stop administering chemotherapy and your body recovers. There is no known way to stop your immune system from attacking your body without leaving you open to all kinds of shit...
All well and good... (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Psst, they weren't using viruses or anything contagious. Hard to see how small plastic inserts and protein could spread from person to person. Even if it did, it would cause an autoimmune disease, not reprogram you to be a vampire/zombie. And there are worse apocalypse scenarios than Will Smith hitting on mannequins.
If this were the internet... (Score:2)
Response from messenger cell: "not ur personal army"
ah, what about immunocomplex? (Score:2)
I am not a doctor, however -- isn't the main problem with cancer cells being that they have the same protein coating as normal cells that identify them to the immune system as "yours" versus "other"? The only way to kill a cancer cell that way would be with something that actually enters the cell and can then interact with the malignant protein. On the outside, cancer cells "look" the same to the immune system. Or is there a protein that expresses in cancer cells that can be differentiated from non-cancer c
Re: (Score:2)
There are some differences...in fact, using reoviruses to cure skin cancer has been attempted - it was mentioned earlier [slashdot.org] on Slashdot.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bah, linked wrong article. Meant this one: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/04/1816227&tid=191 [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
So yes, MHC is exactly this system you conjecture!
Easily abused as a biological weapon. (Score:3, Interesting)
Incorporate this in bullets and you get 100% lethality.
"cellular army bullet" enters body, tip takes sample of nearby healthy cells, programs immune system to attack own body, person dies horrible death to both his own immune system and the pathogens which are now left alone by the distracted immune system.
Re:Easily abused as a biological weapon. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Easily abused as a biological weapon. (Score:4, Interesting)
It would already be trivially easy to make bullets that contained a lethal toxin, the reason we don't do it isn't because of inability. Yes, you could misuse this research (just like any other advance) but it certainly wouldn't be the bio-weapon of choice due to sheer inefficiency and slowness of effect.
that's the beauty of it. It's a terror weapon.
it will leave you in agony for days, weeks, or months knowing you will die.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Easily abused as a biological weapon. (Score:4, Informative)
Incorporate this in bullets and you get 100% lethality.
Well in terms of pure combat standards, an injured soldier is actually worse than a dead one, since the dead one can be carried off later, wheras the injured one needs immediate medical attention.
Your body releases cytokines every time you get cut, or shot. Your immune system manages to avoid killing you in those cases, usually.
Why bother with this roundabout way anyhow? If you absolutely want to kill everyone you shoot, it would be much easier and quicker to make a poisoned bullet.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't usually work that way.
The line response is usually a level of insane fury toward the other side which results in massive cases of prisoner abuse, and the strategic response is to develop terror weapons of their own.
Atrocities tend not to break the will of the people they're perpetrated against, terrorist ideology to the contrary.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If it was that simple, you just need to aerosol the "disperse" signal, which the summary implies makes your immune cells immediately attack anything that matches what they were near at the time...fortunately for everybody, it's not nearly so simple. If it was, how could the chemical signal in question possibly exist? If your body ever released it, SOME cells would be closer to each other or other important cells! Almost as though the summary was a dumbed down explanation of how it sort of works? Plus
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Unleashing the beast (Score:5, Insightful)
The human immune system is a pretty potent beast to unleash. Getting it to attack cancer cells is genius. I would be worried about side effects, specifically the immune system getting confused or over-stimulated and attacking other things, but that's just speculation and surely for highly aggressive cancers like the ones they tested in the mice the risk would be more than worth it. We already use 'cures as bad as the disease' to treat cancer.
On the same note, though, I was encouraged by the teaser at the end where they suggest using similar techniques to 'reprogram' the immune system to correct auto-immune disorders. Learning how to put the immune system back in its cage could be just as useful as being able to send it after a target.
Re: (Score:2)
As someone with severe allergies I enthusiastically agree! Presumably, if they can give instructions to attack then they can give instructions to stand down.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I Am Not A Doctor, but I believe once your immune system is trained to attack a particular type of something, it will always attack it whenever it discovers its presence. The immune system has no central dictionary of things it will or will not attack, but rather, is like a peer to peer system every component of the immune system shares some of the information of the entire body's list of "bad things."
yeah but once they have a taste for blood (Score:4, Funny)
If watching three seasons of Dexter has taught me anything, it's that once someone gets a taste for killing, they have a need to kill again. What happens with this army after it kills the cancer? Who does it kill next? You're going to have a mercenary army running loose in your system desperate for another kill....
Re:yeah but once they have a taste for blood (Score:4, Funny)
If watching three seasons of House has taught me anything, it's that once someone gets a taste for lying, they have a need to lie again. What happens with this army after it lies about curing cancer? Who does it lie to next? You're going to have a mercenary army running loose in your system desperate for another fabrication....
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Re:yeah but once they have a taste for blood (Score:4, Funny)
Watching three seasons of House should have taught you that if doctors think it is cancer, then it's not cancer, unless it turns out to actually be cancer. Also, the first five treatments they try will probably make things worse, and ultimately the patient will only be cured because of some random remark.
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Just thinking out loud... (Score:2)
A long way from human use (Score:2)
Obviously a long way from use in humans. But I am impressed with the out of the box thinking in this approach. It seems dramatic changes in health care are coming in then next decade.
http://pbrewer.blogspot.com/2008/12/dec-18th-lunch.html [blogspot.com]
"Molecular perfume"? (Score:3, Funny)
As opposed to the nonmolecular kind?
The right approach (Score:3, Informative)
I AM LEGEND (Score:3, Funny)
Did anyone else think of the latest movie version of /I AM LEGEND/ when reading about this miracle cure for cancer?
I'll begin hording food and guns now.
To Clarify how Biologic cancer drugs work (Score:5, Informative)
Background info....Think of these antigens the article is referring to as extremely unique binding sites ("locks"). A cell can have a variety of locks on the cell surface. Some exist to bind to only one other molecule or binding site of another specific cell. So for anything to bind this lock, it must work like an incredibly precise lock and key mechanism. Our immune's adaptive systems (that is, T cells) go around with their "set of keys"** to every cell they come across and see if they fit into the "cell's lock" (remember, that's the antigen). These T cells have keys to fit the "locks" of bacteria, viruses, tumors, or any foreign, non-human cells that's there. That is why when you come across the same flu virus you were immunized against, the T cells, already having the right "key" made, can bind to the cell and cause cell death. But if it's a new flu virus, with the lock even slightly modified by a few DNA mutations, the T-cell's keys must be made to fit once again (this takes ~2 weeks and requires B cells, antibody production, etc).
Now to get to the tumor part....Tumors with tumor-specific antigens (TSAs) will fit the keys of T-cells once the keys are made. I recall someone asking "what if the immune cells kill healthy tissue?" There are "locks" called TAAs (tumor associated antigens) that are present on normal and tumor cells...they will all be destroyed. (Thankfully you can regenerate most of your healthy tissue--the rationale behind using toxic chemotherapeutics that target healthy and cancer tissue).
Now to actually explain the article's research....So effectively what this research is trying to accomplish IS THIS: release a barrel of locks around the tumor that will ONLY bind to the tumor. ALLOW your T-cells and other immune cells to use their "keys" to BIND the huge number of locks and activate cell death of the tumor cells. Currently, most research of biologic cancer drug development is focused on producing the right "key" for the naturally occurring "locks" that are present on cancer cells. Let me say that this research is a great approach--why not make and put the locks there?
Side note and extra info for fun....It's easy to think that one method of research is going to replace another. But the new trend is hitting cancer cells with EVERYTHING at once. That is, chemotherapy + biologic + barrel of "locks" + whatever else is out there. In addition, another trend that may occur is treating cancer like a CHRONIC illness, like diabetes. You've all seen how at best we can only kill 90-99% of tumor cells (at least, our imaging technology can only pick up small malignancy, not individual tumor cells)....so imagine getting cancer treatment intermittently every 2-5 years, but never experiencing symptoms of cancer (ie sickness, death)...I just thought I'd share that extra stuff. Now that I'm done with my essay I guess I should get back to my cancer research. Thanks for reading all the way through, and please comment.
**For the science geek: Yes Yes, I know the role antibodies play as the "set of keys" T-cells use...I think it would compromise the easy of explanation if I got into all that
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I can see why you are cynical about pharmaceutical companies, with respect to the epilepsy you have had to deal with. Epilepsy is one of the most distressful neurological diseases there is. The drugs available are horrid and brain surgery to sever the corpus callosum for a chance to relieve seizures is so drastic. And it doesn't help that the major neurological drug companies are spending money to treat mostly psychological problems, rather than truly high risk brain diseases.
But let me defend the evil phar
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I know, right? The Visitors would have given us their cancer cure ages ago, if it wasn't for that stupid Donovan guy.