Radioactive Bacteria Attack Cancer 53
ananyo writes "Two dangerous things together might make a medicine for one of the hardest cancers to treat. In a mouse model of pancreatic cancer, researchers have shown that bacteria can deliver deadly radiation to tumours — exploiting the immune suppression that normally makes the disease so intractable. The researchers coated the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes with radioactive antibodies and injected the bacterium into mice with pancreatic cancer that had spread to multiple sites. After several doses, the mice that had received the radioactive bacteria had 90% fewer metastases compared with mice that had received saline or radiation alone."
Re:So how do I pass these radioactive bacteria? (Score:5, Informative)
Magically transport them to a parallel universe or pass them through me kidneys?
Many medical isotopes have a half-life of just a few days. So by the time the bacteria are done doing their job, the radioactive isotopes have decayed to a harmless level. Since the half-lives are so short, these isotopes cannot be stockpiled, and need to be generated in a reactor no more than a day or so before they are used. There are only a few reactors in the world configured to make these isotopes. The Chalk River Reactor [wikipedia.org] in Ontario makes most medical isotopes for North America, and there was a major shortage of these isotopes in 2007 when it had to shut for maintenance.
Re:So how do I pass these radioactive bacteria? (Score:2, Informative)
Half life of the isotope used in this experiment, Rhenium-188, is just under 17 hours.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9169563