Combining Nanotech and Radiology

Twilight1 writes "According to this article at CNN, researchers are testing a microscopic "smart bomb" to target, attack, and kill cancer cells. It's quite fascinating that they are using radioactive by-products from the production of nuclear power and weapons as the effective payload."

nanogenerators

[inertia(stable)]

I think that this is a very interesting venue in the treatment of cancer. Even though the radioactive atom "eventually becomes harmless and remains in the body," I still think it highly possible that this treatment may be nullified by the radiation emitted by the nanogenerators. Hopefully this is not the case, and we will have found an effective and non-harmful (minimally so, at least) treatment for cancer.

Re:Normal cells

[Versalius]

There can be myriad differences between cancer cells and normal cells or there can be very few differences. This is one of the reasons that cancer is so difficult to treat. In general cancer cells multiply faster than "normal" cells; therefore, they have an increased rate of DNA turnover and metabolism. Usually, both radiotherapy and chemotherapy rely on this phenomenon.

Radiation at sufficient levels and many forms of chemotherapy cause damage to DNA. Normal, slower replicating cells usually have time to repair this damage. Faster replicating cells pass this damaged DNA on to their progeny unrepaired and, hopefully, the cell will eventually die. So, broken down to its most base form both chemo and radiation are poisons and the medical staff tries to walk a fine line of killing the cancer cells before the poisons kill the normal cells.

Vesalius M.D.

Re:Dumb logic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you just love to randomly spout shit about which you know nothing? Ever since you started posting on Slashdot years ago, you've made some concerted effort to be as big a jerk as possible - you THAT pissed off that Propaganda isn't popular anymore?

This is NOT unconcentrated radiation - it's alpha particles (high energy, low penetration particles) being emitted from a SINGLE atom, incorporated into an anitbody specific for tumor proteins - NOT unconcentrated, but designed to target itself - but you could easily have looked this up.

Nope, you, as per several recent posts, must make stupid comments, as if YOU are somehow qualified to answer, please Bowie, get over yourself.

Kevin Christie
Neuroscience Program
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
[e-mail]

Re:Biology Question

[mgv]

Cancer cells are cells which multiply indefinatly, as opposed to normal cells, which only multiply for a specified amoutn of time, and then die off (with the exception of stem cells). Correct?

Its a little more complex.

Normal DNA has caps on the end called telomeres, which don't code for anything directly, but act as a lead in type message for DNA replication (The enzymes have to know where to start replicating DNA from).

Each division fails to fully replicate the Telomeres, which shorten and ultimately lead to a form of (cellular) aging where further cell replication cannot occur.

Enzymes called telomerases can repair the DNA, and stem cells express this. Cancer cells also must repair the telomeres or they will die. This (might) be a possible cause for cancers to spontaneously resolve - my guess here on this one but I'd love feedback.

A cell may not have to divide to live on. Brain and muscle cells generally don't divide, which gives you a certain stability in your shape and thinking processes. They can live for 100 years in an arrested (G0) phase of the cell division cycle. They die mostly because of their choice to do so, a process called apoptysis, which clearly has more benefit than you might think at first.

Well' if I am right so far, can someone tell me why more research isn't going into controlling cancer, rather than destroying it?

Lots of research has gone into this. There are drugs currently in use that renormalise cancer cells including retinoids and thiolidamide, to name a few.

Like, I would think, if you could start and stop the cancer effect at will, you could live forever?

We are already living much longer than we were designed for. Average lifespan has increased tremendously over the last few hundred years from 20 years to 70-80 years. Death is no longer a thing that comes from nowhere or in response to the environment. Now it is considered more of an intrinsic clock in a person.

There are several impediments in the way of acheiving immortality:

The sun will engulf the planet. The universe is finite. You will die, get over it.

Secondly, gene therapy wont help if you stand in front of an oncoming truck. Death can still come from without as well as within.

Thirdly, ageing occurs at many levels. For example, the eye is a largely non living optical instrument. The denaturing of protiens in the lens causes presbyopia (age related long sightedness) in most people in their forties. The treatment for this will probably not be gene therapies (except perhaps to grow whole new eyes), but rather lens implants. Other (mostly) non living parts of your body include tendons, heart valves and teeth, all of which can wear out and do not heal. If it wasn't alive to start with, this technique won't repair it.

Fourthly, other forms of agening occur, such as scarring and stretching. Skin stretching and loss of elasticity has a profound effect on our outward appearance but has little to do with cellular ageing. Similar changes internally lead to blood vessel diseas such as aneurysms.

A little long winded, but hope that this helps.

Michael