Nanomedicine Kills Brain Cancer Cells 99
destinyland writes "Scientists from the University of Chicago and the US Department of Energy have developed the first nanoparticles that seek out and destroy GMB brain cancer cells. Nanoparticles killed up to 80% of the brain cancer cells after just five minutes of exposure to white light, showing the promise of nanomedicine — highly-specific intervention at the molecular scale. Because nanomedicine could repair brain cells or damaged nerve and muscle tissue, the NIH has established eight Nanomedicine Development Centers around the country for their Nanomedicine Roadmap Initiative. Researchers have also used gold nanospheres to search out and 'cook' skin cancer cells with light — 'It's basically like putting a cancer cell in hot water and boiling it to death,' says one researcher. And the NIH Roadmap ultimately predicts 'novel tiny sensors ... that search for, and destroy, infectious agents.'"
Awesome! (Score:2, Informative)
Nanoparticles killed up to 80% of the brain cancer cells...
Awesome!
...after just five minutes of exposure to white light
Wait. What? So much for non-invasive.
Re:Side effects (Score:5, Informative)
Usually in these cases, the particles are surface-activated to only attach to cancer cells. What this means is that cancer cells typically have unique antigens on the surface and the nanoparticles are treated to bind only to them. And since proteins are very picky when they pick what other things they bond to, there's a low chance that it will find another cell with similar morphology to attach to. Then again, considering how diverse and extensive the body is, I'm sure that there's a chance that it could find some other cell to bind to; but that's purely a statistical argument, I'm not referencing any biological data on that front.
Re:Don't expect too much from this treatment (Score:5, Informative)
You don't need to resect. You can access as with a Stereotactic biopsy [wikipedia.org], using a computer and (previously done) MRI scans to generate a 3-D image of the brain mapped to the patient's head during surgery to guide instrumentation. This allows the surgeon to maneuver around blood vessels (bleeding being the most immediate threat) and such. Radioactive disks can be inserted and removed like this as well.
I believe the system used for my wife's biopsy was accurate to 0.4 mm. They only drilled a "small" (surgeon's words) 5/8 inch hole in her head, behind the right ear, for access. When done, it was patched up and you couldn't tell anything had been done after the incision healed.
Re:Don't expect too much from this treatment (Score:5, Informative)
The major advantage of proton treatment over conventional radiation, however, is that the energy distribution of protons can be directed and deposited in tissue volumes designated by the physicians-in a three-dimensional pattern from each beam used.
and Antimatter Therapy [rsc.org]:
While an x-ray beam deposits energy along its entire path through the body, a beam of charged particles does damage only after electrical interactions have slowed it sufficiently to create a high chance of collision with atomic nuclei. This means that proton beams deposit most of their energy over a focused area, such as a collection of tumour cells, in the last millimetre of their journey.
Re:Side effects (Score:5, Informative)
The antibody in question binds the EGF receptor. Off the top of my head I can think of..... oh about every stem cell in your body that expresses this receptor.
If I recall, it's also expressed at much, much, much higher levels in many cancers than it is in normal cells.
And the abstract to this paper [nih.gov] suggests that as well: "Overexpression of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is observed in many cancers, sometimes accompanied by gene amplification." That abstract also suggests that in at least one type of cancer, the more EGFR you have the worse the cancer is. I'm not a cancer biologist and I'm not reading any more than abstracts tonight, but this paper [nih.gov] and this paper [nih.gov] at first glance seemed to indicate the same thing.
While the good cells are wearing targets, the bad cells are wearing many more targets, so if your efficiency at hitting targets is lower than 100%, you're going to be killing more bad cells than good cells.
The author's system is great in a petri dish, but there's a reason it's published in a low tier journal.
And that reason is probably the following: the 80% of cells in a dish is probably not that impressive compared to developed drugs, however this was just a proof of concept. The wright brothers only flew a few hundred feet. There are undoubtedly refinements that could be made to this system that would increase the efficiency, but it's not to that stage yet. This technology might turn out to be a true cure for cancer once it's refined.
And don't criticize them for doing it in a dish just yet, this press release [anl.gov] says "So far, tests have been done only on cells in a laboratory setting, but animal testing is planned for the next phase."
They can hardly be blamed for not delivering the magic bullet cure to cancer in one fell swoop, that's just not how these things work.
Re:rise of species 000 (Score:3, Informative)
I, for one, welcome our Borg overlords.