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Biotech Science

Common Cold A Cure For Brain Tumors? 51

Posted by timothy from the blesshoo dept.
JackMonkey writes "According to this article at CNN, scientists have genetically engineered a cold virus to kill inoperable brain tumors in mice. 'The effects were so stunning that the National Cancer Institute and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are rushing to test the approach in people with brain tumors. If it works, it will be the first treatment for malignant glioma, the deadliest form of brain cancer. '"
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Common Cold A Cure For Brain Tumors? More

Common Cold A Cure For Brain Tumors?

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  • Like sending soldiers into battle (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @07:41PM (#5897226) Homepage Journal
    Those rats are poor little creatures indeed, taking brain tumors for mankind and being dissected after 140 days of life. But like the dying soldier on the battlefield, their deaths have meaning and significance.

    I certainly hope this treatment works without problems, but that it is being reported by CNN doesn't really give me much confidence.
    • Once, after watching some gruesome footage from some anti-vivisectionist group I was quite shocked. After some navigation I'm more-or-less convinced that the rodents die a gentle death, drifting to unconciousness before passing away. Many people die in their sleep and I don't think they suffer as long as they're not aware of what's coming (that's why I think capital punishment is inhumane... it's a torture)
      • I'm a graduate student (PhD) working in a molecular biology/immunology lab, and have quite a bit of experience in euthanasia. For most research, rodents are euthanized via anaesthesia, basically going to sleep and never waking up. However, anaesthesia can interfere with the immune system, nervous system, and other vital areas. If one of them happens to be your area of study (immunology for me), the prefered method is cervical dislocation. You take the mouse out of its cage (holding it by its tail) and put
        • Well, it all depends on how distributed are the perception areas in the nervous system. That the body is parted from it's control center and thus doesn't react says nothing on what's going on within the now isolated network; does it react to asphixia? What do the autonomic centers controlling oxigenation report to the upper layers? Does the brain panic as it realizes that it's signals aren't feeding back? Does the spine report pain for it's recision or report the data black out? I think the process should b

        • Re:Like sending soldiers into battle (Score:1, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Remind me to tell all my friends about how seriously fucked up you screwheads are.

          "Hey, look what I learned at school mom! I can pull a rat's spine apart with my bare hands!"
  • Actually, it's brain tumors that are a cure for the common cold.

  • Mice lifespan (Score:4, Interesting)

    by klui ( 457783 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @07:48PM (#5897285)
    The article said 60% died in 140 days vs. 20 days without treatment. Is this their normal lifespan?

    • Re:Mice lifespan (Score:5, Funny)

      by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <<ieshan> <at> <gmail.com>> on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @08:00PM (#5897360) Homepage Journal
      "The animals lived 140 days -- we took the brains out at that point and found no tumors there," Lang said in a telephone interview. Normally, mice injected with human brain tumor cells die within 20 days."

      They checked at 140 days for tumor tissue and didn't find any. Their normal lifespan might be longer, but it's significantly less if you kill them. =P

    • Re:Mice lifespan (Score:2, Insightful)

      by VersedM ( 323660 )
      Normal lifespan for the mice used in research is between one and two years.
      • I personally feel 4 months is too soon to start discecting these mice. What about the drug keeping the cancerous cells in remission but may reappear later? Or did the scientists figure that the 100 days is equivalent to x-human years? Guess this is a good first step.

  • Is why we haven't been able to cure common cold (Score:5, Funny)

    by shodson ( 179450 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @07:51PM (#5897295) Homepage
    If we had cured the common cold we may not have stumbled upon this...
  • Research into the common cold has skyrocketed due to SARS. How is this related? Is it at all?

    If researchers are finding benefits to viral infections, is there a benefit to SARS? how about Polio, Smallpox, or any of the other diseases we have wiped out? Does AIDS have an intrinsic benefit?

    I am not advocating research into the above points, but am merely interested in benefits to supposedly harmfull viruses.
    • In all honesty, they may be beneficial in some way that we have not thought of, but they are far to dangerous to work with without expensive containment. If a biologist slips and gives himself the common cold, at least it probably wont kill him.
  • Don't get me wrong here. I am all for genetic engineering... but I have play devils advocate for a moment here...

    IANAS but they are takeing a cold virus... and makeing it kill BAD brain tissue? What happens if the virus ends up killing normal brain tissue for some reason? Mutation or oversight on their part?

    Not that I am saying this could or would happen... but what if? Especially if this thing managed to spread much like SARS has been doing?

    It would be pretty damn scary if the next plague was caused by people having their brains eaten away =)

    Of course, then again... Benificial genetically modified virii are probably very much our future. Could you imagine one day going in for innoculations... where the innoculation is a host of ACTIVE virii designed with keeping specific things in check? (Cancer and etc.) Or even more interesting... becomeing innoculated just by hanging out with a friend who went in for the shots? LOL
    • wow, i think you have just stumbled upon a great plot for a sci-fi horror/thriller novel. It would certainly make a gripping plot. AND the general population is still eating up that DNA stuff (don't even get me started on that =P)
      yeah i think a book about a genetically engineer cold virus made to cure cancer, but eventually evovled to a brain eating disease would be a big seller. Get on it dude.

      SWEET!
      • There is already such a beast, Mimic . If you have not seen it there is a deadly disease in New York that is spread by cockroaches so they make a a genetically engineered one that will kill the others (or something along those lines), but the problem is they don't work out quite as planned.
      • Yeah! And it's up to a team of researcher to get a sample of the original virus...or, maybe a MONKEY infected by the virus, so they can get antibodies...antibodies they can use to cure everybody!!!

        I'm tired of movies where they find the cure for the deadly virus in the last reel, and it's over! If any viral disease could be cured that easily, we wouldn't have to worry about HIV, Ebola, SARS, Hepatitis, Herpes, Norwalk, Hantavirus, West Nile, or the Common Cold...
    • What happens if the virus ends up killing normal brain tissue for some reason?

      I understand your point and I would further assert that yours is a generic concern in the area of genetic engineering. We know how to sequence DNA (mostly error free), we can look at a segment of RNA and predict what protein(s) it might produce, but we really don't know enough about the big picture to predict side effect and the potential for mutation to be able to 're-program' a bacteria or virus to do what and only what we wa

    • Re:... and what if things go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by olman ( 127310 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @07:52AM (#5900165)
      If you're already dying out of the brain tumor, are you going to give a damn?

      • Re:... and what if things go wrong? (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        If you're already dying out of the brain tumor, are you going to give a damn?

        Would you object to catching if from someone being treated for brain tumor who just happened to sneeze on you?

      • The thing about the common cold is, it's contagious. So I think maybe the worry here is that this brain-eating virus might spread.

        Carzy, isn't it? To think that people could get all worked up about a deadly contagious disease.

        Thank god it's only slashdot. Imagine if the threat were real!
        • The thing about the common cold is, it's contagious. So I think maybe the worry here is that this brain-eating virus might spread.


          That still won't bother anyone who's due for viral treatment. There's this neat thing called "quarantine", too.
    • Cancer cells would be identified by certain characteristics of the cell - surface proteins, agressive transport, etc.

      I'd like to put in my two cents that it's about as likely for a genetically engineered virus to mutate and cause a brain-eating disease as it is for a regular one to do so - and probably less likely, since "successful" mutation requires a variety of hosts and a "useful" survival function.
  • David Webber this time, (not the only, or the first I would bet... but,) from his popular Honor Harrington series, one planet used this "primitive" form of genetic engineering to harden the population against heavy metals.

    The only problem was that a gene that was manipulated by this gene-altered-cold virus also happened to cause an abnormal number of male-embryos to be miscarried. (8 out of 9 failed mail pregnancies or something like that) blah blah blah, read the books for more info.

    Point being: If thi
    • One can only hope people smarter than you will set the standards.
    • > David Webber this time, (not the only, or the first I would bet... but,) from his popular Honor Harrington series, one planet used this "primitive" form of genetic engineering to harden the population against heavy metals.
      > The only problem was that a gene that was manipulated by this gene-altered-cold virus also happened to cause an abnormal number of male-embryos to be miscarried. (8 out of 9 failed mail pregnancies or something like that) blah blah blah, read the books for more info.

      So..

  • Diabetes Cured Too (Score:5, Informative)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @09:44PM (#5897985) Homepage Journal
    Some scientists used a similar virus technique to insert a gene into mouse liver cells, convincing them to be pancreas cells and produce insulin, thereby curing their diabetes [nature.com]. Good stuff.

  • stone_count=1; dead_bird_count=2; (Score:4, Funny)

    by Paddyish ( 612430 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @09:49PM (#5898019)
    if RIAA/MPAA executives caught it, they just might shrivel up and die as well!

    Science can be a beautiful thing...

  • Yahoo article. [yahoo.com] Sounds incredibly promising as the death rate for this form of cancer in humans is so high (sounds like 100 percent according to the article).
  • Infectious vector that can swap genes with a similar virus spreadable through air - therapeutic brain-SARS is what the doctor prescribed! - I hope that I won't become bystander, once we get this common cold that could whack our glial cells!

    Do you remember that antibody therapy recently that worked so great on Alzheimer patients (removing their plaques by immune activation) that they all started dying due to immediate brain inflamation? That was non-infective therapy.
  • had this been announced 2 years ago my dad would still be alive. no shit. i don't know wether to feel regret, hate, or to be relieved that there is now a cure for this terrible, terrible disease.
    • Hate? Because the scientists are trying as hard as they can? It's not magic, you know.
    • If this had been discovered 20 years ago then MAYBE we would have a cure. 99% of these "miracle" cures never work out. With any luck though it will help another scientist come up with something that will work.
    • Not really. Actually I think work like this has been done before - in that one they use a modified virus that cannot replicate unless it's in a cancerous cell. However I haven't heard much after that.

      If they announced this study 2 years ago, you and your dad would feel a lot worse, knowing that there might be a cure, but not being able to get one.

      Since about 1/3 of us eventually dies of cancer, hopefully they find better methods soon.

      BTW: apparently scientists have found a breed of mice that are immune t

    • Re:well F*uck (Score:3, Insightful)

      by turgid ( 580780 )
      Sorry to hear about your dad. My grandmother died in the same way. It's a terrible fact of life that as things progress, there are things which if only we'd know about them sooner, things would be different. Although this can't bring back our relatives, it is a glimmer of hope for the future, for those who have or are going to develop brain tumours, and maybe even other kinds of tumour. Hindsight can be cruel, but this offeres hope too.

  • fine and dandy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Noodlenose ( 537591 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @02:46AM (#5899220) Homepage Journal
    The problem with most of these announcements is that either due to the lack of

    • a) funding
    • b) applicabilty in vivo hominis

    these things never ever have an impact on clinical medicine. All these press releases do is please the ego of the biologist. Clinical medicine is mostly untouched by "discoveries" like that.


  • Further mutations of the virus might enhance Tumors, even kill ordiniary cells. I wonder if these experiments are being carried out in China and HongKong...
  • This is old news. The phrase "Sneezing my brains out" has been around way before copyrights protected new old discoveries.
  • My girlfriend [j-maxx.net]s uncle has glioma and it also runs in her family. Her mother is in remission and her aunt survived it. My gf [j-maxx.net]and I are also starting to get worried, she's been seeing signs(one eye totally losing sight for a few hours, seeing lights and headaches) that something may be wrong. She's going in for a MRI once her HMO approves it. We are hoping this treatment becomes available in the near future, but most likely it will be too late for her Uncle. He's been given till november at the latest.

    I fe

  • quick cure for cancer (Score:3, Funny)

    by falsification ( 644190 ) on Wednesday May 07, 2003 @01:13PM (#5903194) Journal
    Want to become famous? Just cure cancer. Here's how.

    1. Get a cancer patient.
    2. Get a sample of the patient's tumor.
    3. Do a DNA analysis on the tumor. (The tumor DNA will be based on the patient's DNA, but is slightly mutated.
    4. Create a special virus that attacks the tumor, but nothing else.
    5. Inject the artificial virus into the tumor.
    6. Wait a few weeks as the virus eats away the tumor. When there is no more tumor, the virus will die, too.
    7. Repeat for all cancer patients.

    When you accept your Nobel Prize, be sure to mention /.

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