Implant Raises Cellular Army To Attack Cancer 193
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."
All well and good... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:ah, what about immunocomplex? (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:ah, what about immunocomplex? (Score:2, Informative)
So yes, MHC is exactly this system you conjecture!
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]
Re:All well and good... (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.
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.
Re:Unleashing the beast (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."
The right approach (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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.
Re:Easily abused as a biological weapon. (Score:3, Informative)
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
May also work as a "cure" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:uhhh (Score:1, Informative)
Well, there's still the part where the detergent has to be either capable of passing into one's bloodstream with minimal ill effects or unable to enter the bloodstream at all. Then there's the part where you're attempting to dissolve hard carbon deposits (you can see where a carbon-dissolving solution would be problematic for carbon-based lifeforms). Further still, there are the sections of the lungs that have become encased by other cells attempting to separate the foreign objects.
Because of these (and probably more issues; I'm a layman), it seems that surgical removal of damaged/obstructed tissue with some stem-cell regeneration of healthy lung tissue would be more promising.
Re:uhhh (Score:2, Informative)
Re:To Clarify how Biologic cancer drugs work (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 pharmaceutical companies that people like me work for. I have worked for both the public (academia) and the private sectors so I have some experience to compare. When investors put money into a company it drives research. It is something about valuing time more than money that allows these companies to attract talented researchers, the most cutting edge equipment and supplies to facilitate fast pace research. And what we are working towards, I assure you, is a cure. It is not for discovery of an obscure biological feature or to say oh neat, how interesting, and move along to the next thing. It is to make a product that has value and can be sold... quickly. That product must either cure the disease or work better than the competitors as a treatment for the disease. We cherry pick as much useful information as we can from the widely published public sector and use that as the backbone to rationalize our research, but it is the private sector that ultimately provides us with the drugs we need.
I hope that as advances in neuroscience come along, epilepsy will be a thing of the past. I am hopeful because great strides in brain imaging have and are continuing to take place and scientists are beginning to get past the tip of understanding the brain iceberg and how it works, how it can go wrong, and how we can treat problems.