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Biotech Science

Nanotechnology Used To Kill Cancer 37

Posted by michael from the collateral-damage dept.
to_kallon writes "A company called Kereos is developing a pair of nanotechnologies to identify tumors that measure just 1 mm in diameter, then kill them with a tiny but precise amount of a chemotherapy drug."
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Nanotechnology Used To Kill Cancer More

Nanotechnology Used To Kill Cancer

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  • WOAH! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Twirlip of the Mists ( 615030 )
    Come on, y'all. We all know that Slashdot isn't a news site, but you guys please at least pretend to be occasionally? How's this for a suggestion:

    Nanotechnology may someday be used to fight cancer

    How's that?

    • Re:WOAH! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by demachina ( 71715 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @01:44PM (#9497800)
      Maybe you're just a ridiculous nit picker.

      The submission didn't say its being using to fight cancer "in humans".

      James Baker, at the University of Michigan, has done something similar and has dramatically improved targeting of chemotherapy (30X improvement) in animal studies. Another link:

      http://www.forbes.com/investmentnewsletters/2004 /0 1/29/cz_jw_0129soapbox.html

      The article doesn't spell it out but if Kereos is starting human trials in 2005 they must be doing animal trials with some success at this point too. If they are killing cancer in animals with the technique then the wording in the submission is completely acceptable. If Kereos isn't showing success in animals with the technique then I'd be inclined to say the whole story is more than a little premature, but you can turn to Baker's work instead and he is fighting cancer, in animals, using nanotechnology.

      • Re:WOAH! (Score:5, Informative)

        by Sgt York ( 591446 ) <jvolm@NospaM.earthlink.net> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @02:06PM (#9498113)
        If they are killing cancer in animals with the technique then the wording in the submission is completely acceptable

        The only problem is that we've been able to cure cancer in mice for over a decade. There aren't many cancers (except the wacky ones we give by knockout/transgenic technology) that we can't cure in mice. The trouble is that when you do the same thing in humans, people either balk at it (viral delivery) or develop serious comlications when you try it (most cytokine therapies) or simply don't work (p53 adenosviral selection therapies, so far). This could be great, but it may just be another way to cure cancer.....in mice.

      • This sounds very similar to therapies that have been around for 15-20 years using radio-labelled antibodies. The idea is that antibodies to proteins expressed in tumours can be used to deliver radioactive isotopes (iodine, strontium - nasty ones..) to the tumour. Apparently it works very well in mice but in humans the antibodies are concentrated and destroyed in the liver. There was a guy who worked downstairs on this marginal research - finding people for trials that he must have known had no hope of worki
    • Come on, y'all. We all know that Slashdot isn't a news site, but you guys please at least pretend to be occasionally? How's this for a suggestion:

      Nanotechnology may someday be used to fight cancer

      How's that?

      I'm pretty sure that the editors aren't the ones picking the headlines--it's the people who submit the stories as far as I know. So basically, I think you want to bitch at whomever submits things with wordings you don't immediately agree with rather than just try to make blanket statements about the

  • Imagine the other potential uses.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by davidsyes ( 765062 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @12:44PM (#9497106) Homepage Journal
    Could this technology be abused to seek out certain cells associated with memory, pleasure, pain, etc.

    Imagine if these nanotech bots could lie dormant, awaiting activation by an authority or a torturer. People could be abducted, injected, released, and then tortured into complying with all sorts of illegal requests (get us a copy of that .025 millimeter fab/chip; give us the secret sauce recipe...)

    Alternatively, this could be used to somehow little by little nudge the lifespan of cells upward a few percentage points...

    • Re:Imagine the other potential uses.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @12:59PM (#9497279) Journal
      The real secret of life is both preventing cells from dying and preventing cells from dividing. Each parent cell has a limited number of times its children cells can undergo mitosis. Cancer is mitosis out of control. So finding out exactly under what conditions cells begin replication is the key.
      • What could be scarier is "accelerated mitosis" that looks natural however bizarre. This could be a new type of bio-weapon, or genocidal tool, too.

        Could the nano bots linger dormant for months? These might make effective "prisoner control" mechanisms. The mere THOUGHT of rioting could cause nausea, dizziness, constipation, diarrhea, loss of sexual appetite, tension, or with whatever "capabilities" the makers want to endow the bots with.

        Maybe totally docile societies could be engineered ro retrofitted. Borg
    • A wonderfull way to protect against that would be to end the idea of closed source entirely. Why fight the symptom when you can destroy the disease?
    • Or, they could just use the drugs we have now. A lot cheaper. And they'd be a lot easier to get a hold of- simple drugs vs rare, expensive, hi-tech nanos. And just as effective, at least as far as stimulating pain, pleasure, etc.

      The lifespan thing would be a use, although you don't say how. Killing random cells would nudge their lifespan up? Or where do you get this idea?
    • Memory is stored holographically so it could not seek out memory without doing massive damage, probably killing you.

      Both Plain and Pleasure cells would be difficult to hurt/remove, but easy to "activate" (Release cocaine molecule on top of receptor upon command).

      But it would be FAR easier to remove dormant nano-bots than it would be to put them in.

      And a nano-infected person under control should be easily detectable by human judgment (They would look like a drugged out man or an epileptic.)

      Far easeier t

      • Hi gurps_npc,

        A couple of things (maybe more than a couple) come to mind. I numbered them in the order that you presented two which piqued my curiosity:

        2. "But it would be FAR easier to remove dormant nano-bots than it would be to put them in."

        Well, what if the subject also had been injected with some quasi-metal polymer that is activate by the bot? Sure, these comments easily can fall into the realm of "sci-fi", but most sci-fi and reality tend to merge. SO, if a polymer is near the nano-bots, and the bo
        • 2) Basically you are putting in an auto-destruct program, even further complicating the nanobot. It should STILL be easier cure than create. Your harmful nanobots must 1) accomplish their mission, 2) fight my attackers, 3) self-destruct messily. All my Good bots need to do is accomplish their mission. If they have a 99% success rate, with a 1% self-desruct activated, the human patient should survive reasonably well.

          1) By Holographic memory I am refering to storage organization, not physical storage.

          • Fair. Fair.

            Question. How (cost and tech) effective would it be to "blurr" a target's overall memories.

            I'm not talking wholesale brain-drain, but just render the person useless for a position. Say, making a bad or corrupt official have to be replaced. Maybe they can play with Legos, build model kits, or even run in MD charity races, or even be a taxi driver. But, if this were applied on a greater scale, could entire populaces be rendered "feckless" or "submissive".

            I suppose, OTOH, this might be a useful w

  • Programming Error? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Alphanos ( 596595 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @01:07PM (#9497385)
    This seems like an incredibly dangerous idea to me. Supposing that the nanotech "programmer" produces a logic error, what's to prevent the thing from simply killing every cell in your body? The distinction, after all, between cancerous and "normal" cells is pretty fine.

    • Re:Programming Error? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @01:11PM (#9497428) Homepage Journal
      huh, I wonder what kind of cancer treatment wouldn't sound incredibly dangerous to you then.
      how about RADIATION?
      or just old style POISONS?

      the thing is, cancer cells need to be KILLED...

      there's lots of treatments that are extremely dangerous.. but they're still worth it.
    • Built in fail-safes.

      Atleast three levels, tested, and re-checked. When triggered, the bots either begin attacking themselves, each other, or simply shut down. The third option is best, and would be the first course of action. If a bot fails to shut down, nearby bots intercept and destroy it. The problem with the seek-and-destroy bot system is you end up with cell attrition, but, then again, two or three or ten cells on that scale is a small price to pay, per 2% of the populace.

    • Re:Programming Error? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sgt York ( 591446 ) <jvolm@NospaM.earthlink.net> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @02:28PM (#9498337)
      Not likely. The FA was kind sketchy, but I would surmise that it is antibody or ligand targeted. Either way, the process is developed once, and then fabrication begins on a large scale. The only place where the error could be introduced is in the development phase, especially if it's ligand targeted. Genetics (and therefore antibodies) have the remote potential to change, but chemistry doesn't change.

      It is possible for something like this to go rampant, but it would not kill every cell in your body; not even close.

      The whole point to this is to be able to deliver very small quantities of drug to precisely where it needs to be. The current strategy with chemotherapeutics is that you deliver drug to the whole body, trying to keep a steady-state level in the tissues that will be lethal to the tumor, but only minimally impact normal cells. You play on the increased susceptibility of cancer cells to the drug. This is often not universally effective; which is why cancer patients can be killed by the treatment, lose their hair and often develop GI problems, among other things. The point was made before, and it is accurate: Chemotherapeutics are poisons.

      With this technology, instead of just giving the drug systemically, you chemically tie it up until it gets to the right location. It then dumps the drug payload locally, increasing the concentration right on top of the cancer cell, and only on top of the cancer cell. Even if these did just bind to random cells in the body and activate, there would be a diffuse and random population of cells that died or are even affected. Effects would most likely be minimal, if even noticeable.

      Think nuke and hand grenade. Ignoring morale and morality, a few hand grenades going off in random places in a city won't do any real damage. But, it they go off in just the right place during an attack, they can do a lot of good.

    • Umm, i think it would probably be tested at least once before it approved by the fda.
    • The question isn't if it's dangerous, but if it's more dangerous than letting the cancer cells replicate at will or the previous cures.

      So which of these you prefer:

      a) Getting injected with a traditional chemotherapy toxin that indiscriminately kills every fast-dividing cell in your body. These include such "useless" things as cells making up immune system and bone marrow, for example.

      or b) Getting injected with same toxin in cancer-seeking nano-containers that may have very slight error margin?

      Worst-cas
  • Let's hope this doesn't get patented too much so that it becomes widespread.
  • gadolinium, which glows under MRI
    Obviously someone thought that having a high contrast in an MRI scan was actually the same as literally glowing.

  • And yet... (Score:3, Funny)

    by JasonMaggini ( 190142 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @04:27PM (#9499921)
    ...still no cure for c--

    oh, wait.

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