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Biotech Science

Nanotech Trojan Horse That Kills Cancer 276

Posted by Zonk from the raaaaaaaaaiiiiiid? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "University of Michigan scientists have created the nanotechnology equivalent of a Trojan horse to smuggle a powerful chemotherapeutic drug inside tumor cells - increasing the drug's cancer-killing activity and reducing its toxic side effects." From the article: "The drug delivery vehicle used by U-M scientists is a manmade polymer molecule called a dendrimer. Less than five nanometers in diameter, these dendrimers are small enough to slip through tiny openings in cell membranes. One nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter, which means it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair."
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Nanotech Trojan Horse That Kills Cancer More

Nanotech Trojan Horse That Kills Cancer

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  • Can't resist Trojan Horse joke... (Score:3, Funny)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:20AM (#12841263)


    Beware of geeks bearing gifts.

    ^_^

  • yuck... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:21AM (#12841279) Journal
    these dendrimers are small enough to slip through tiny openings in cell membranes.

    I know that this technology is supposed to be helpful, but something about the process makes me feel uncomfortable.

    • Re:yuck... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shihar ( 153932 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @10:23AM (#12841956)
      Sure, this might make you feel uncomfortable, but guess what will make you feel even more uncomfortable? Having your body bombarded by potentially levels of radiation so high that it is potentially fatal.

      There are so many ways to improve upon killing humans. Is one more way really worth worrying about? So someone has found a better way to diliver a chemical payload into a human cell. Certainly I bet someone can figure out how to make said payload lethal. Who cares though? We already have chemical and viruses sitting around that can kill within seconds. It is like worrying that some nation went from owning 5000 to 10,000 nuclear weapons, or worrying about getting shot 100 times rather then 50. If genocide is your goal, the tools are already avaliable.

      I personally am excited at the prospect of a new treatments like the one outlined. Dead is dead. You can throw HF in my face or you can throw your nano-poisonin my face. Either way, the outcome is the same. On the other hand, nanomedicen is not chemo. Chemo has the potential to be almost as bad as the cancer. If a nanomedicen can kill cancer and do less harm to my body, I am all for it, paranoia be damned.
      • What if the goal is not to make you dead? What if the goal is to make you silently infertile, with a low enough dose that it is cleared from your system and is untracable after a few days?

        there's more than one way to commit a genocide
        • You know, that's really clever. Now, all we need to make it really tin-foil-hattish is to figure out a way for it to target only brown people.

          Seriously, though, did you just come up with that, or did you hear it somewhere else?

          --grendel drago
      • Chemicals that can kill you in seconds I'll buy, but what viruses can kill a human being in mere seconds? Or by "seconds" do you mean 259,200+ of them?

    • Re:yuck... (Score:4, Informative)

      by iamlucky13 ( 795185 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @12:54PM (#12843914)
      "It's like a Trojan horse," Baker explains. "Folate molecules on the nanoparticle bind to receptors on tumor cell membranes and the cell immediately internalizes it
      According to that passage, it's not quite as simple as slipping through the cell membrane, like osmosis of water. It sounds like they're taking advantage of facilitated transport. Your cells need some molecules that are too large to fit through your cell membrane, so instead there are "gates" for them to pass through that are essentially proteins embedded in the membrane. Each gate can bond to a particular molecule, so you theoretically don't have stuff getting through that shouldn't. When the molecule bonds to the protein, it changes shape, taking the molecule in, typically without the expenditure of ATP (cell energy).

      I'm curious, what exactly about this makes you feel uncomfortable?

    • Re:yuck... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mbius ( 890083 )
      something about the process makes me feel uncomfortable.

      Try having cancer.

  • Yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:21AM (#12841280)
    How do they get the horse so small?

    -- Jessica Simpson

  • Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by tezbobobo ( 879983 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:24AM (#12841319) Homepage Journal
    Trojans kill cancer

    Trojans infect my system

    Therefore Windows = Cancer

    • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)

      by pointbeing ( 701902 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:30AM (#12841387)
      Trojans kill cancer

      Trojans infect my system

      Therefore Windows = Cancer

      This is what happens when people sleep through college-level logic courses ;-)

      • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by tezbobobo ( 879983 )
        In light of my feeble attempts at college level logic courses I find your post very amusing. You appeal to the flaw in my arguement by way of reference to modern positivist emiricism. And yet on the other hand, you sig is a postmodern, postpositivist appeal to something along the lines of structural relativism. Whoa, I'm freakin' out man...
        • Are we heading in to a discussion of subject-object dichotomy?

          Just wondering, while I'm wandering.
        • In light of my feeble attempts at college level logic courses I find your post very amusing. You appeal to the flaw in my arguement by way of reference to modern positivist emiricism. And yet on the other hand, you sig is a postmodern, postpositivist appeal to something along the lines of structural relativism. Whoa, I'm freakin' out man...

          It was meant to be amusing rather than inflammatory. Enjoy your weekend ;-)

        • OMG. Please mod parent up! Does anybody here have a brain?

  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by new death barbie ( 240326 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:24AM (#12841322)
    Symantec has already identified the Trojan and released an upgrade to its popular Norton Anti-Virus software.

    "If you are using Norton Anti-Virus, you do not have to worry about having your cancer cured without your knowledge," a spokesperson said.

  • How do they determine cancer/non cancer cells? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:24AM (#12841327) Homepage Journal
    Or does this chemical only attack cancer cells, and the dendromere helps it into all cells?

    • Re:How do they determine cancer/non cancer cells? (Score:5, Informative)

      by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:28AM (#12841374)



      From TFA:


      Dendrimers have a tree-like structure with many branches where scientists can attach a variety of molecules, including drugs. In experiments reported in Cancer Research, U-M scientists attached methotrexate, a powerful anticancer drug, to branches of the dendrimer. On other branches, they attached fluorescent imaging agents and their secret ingredient - a vitamin called folic acid.

      Folic acid, or folate, is an important vitamin required for the healthy functioning of all cells. But cancer cells, in particular, seem to need more than average amounts. To soak up as much folate as possible, some cancer cells display more docking sites called folate receptors on their cell membranes. By taking advantage of a cancer cell's appetite for folate, U-M scientists are able to prevent the cells from developing resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs.
    • I just RTFA, and it says the dendromere molecule somehow has folic acid attached to it. All cells need folic acid, but tumors require much more of it than healthy tissue. That is how they are targeting cancer cells rather than all cells. No doubt healthy tissue will also absorb the cell destroying chemicals, but cancerous cells will absorb it to a greater degree. That's the improvement over traditional chemo.

      They didn't mention it in the article, but I wonder if it would be beneficial to inject the sub
      • They didn't mention it in the article, but I wonder if it would be beneficial to inject the substance directly into a tumor.

        Maybe not as beneficial as one might think. I'm not a doctor but have done more research on the topic than most people should have to do.

        If you let them grow long enough most malignancies will shed tumor cells into the host's lymph system or bloodstream - the process is called micrometastasis. At that point it's probably better to treat the cancer as a systemic disease rather tha

        • think we need to make the drugs safer and more effective rather than focusing on the delivery system. Better delivery of a drug that's only 95% effective isn't a cure.

          Incineration of the entire body will kill the cancer cells 100% of the time - but like the commercials say, "doctors agree" that the delivery system has some downsides.

          Much of the problem of present chemotherapy is the nondesired effects, such as death from posioning, due to a need to deliver a great quantity of the drug in order to get

      • That's the improvement over traditional chemo

        Not necessarily. Traditional chemotherapy depends on the differential toxicity of a drug towards tumor cells compared to non tumor cells. This can be on the basis of cell growth, specific nutrients or other properties. All current chemotherapeutic methods are toxic to ALL cells to a greater or lesser extent.

        The higher the specificity of the treatment for cancer cells compared to non cancer cells, the safer the treatment. 100% toxicity for cancer cells and

    • they are bribing them with honey for lack of a better analogy. the article talks about super charging these little buggers with lots of folic acids which cancer cells gobble up in large quantities. "But cancer cells, in particular, seem to need more than average amounts. To soak up as much folate as possible, some cancer cells display more docking sites called folate receptors on their cell membranes. By taking advantage of a cancer cell's appetite for folate, U-M scientists are able to prevent the cells
    • Unfortunately the article explains quite clearly that ALL cells require folate (folic acid), however cancer cells will eat it up like its going out of style. While some good cells will still absorb/receive the poisoned payload of the dendrimer, the cancerous cells will want to eat the absorb them first. Once the dendrimer (the nanotech peice of the whole article) is absorbed, the folate is absorbed by the cancer cell, and then (not necessarily in this order) the methotrexate is absorbed, which is the canc

  • Condescension in submission text (Score:5, Funny)

    by AEton ( 654737 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:25AM (#12841332)
    One nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter, which means it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair.

    I'm sorry, but I just don't get it. How many of these suckers can I fit in a Library of Congress?

  • Nanoparticles? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Raindance ( 680694 ) * <`johnsonmx' `at' `gmail.com'> on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:26AM (#12841354) Homepage Journal
    The real news here, if I can interpret the press release correctly, is not that the nanoparticle is the trojan horse, but that its small size *allowed* the researchers to construct the trojan horse.

    The article summary is a bit brief- basically, cancer needs a lot of folate. Moreso than normal cells. These folks attached both an anti-cancer drug and a bunch of folate to a nanoparticle, which, due to both its small size and tasty-looking folate, is able to enter cells and deliver the anti-cancer payload rather than slowly diffuse it through the cell wall.

    This is still a bit of a shotgun approach, as normal cells still get targetted to some extent, but *much* less so than previous methods.
    • tasty-looking folate, ...

      That just sounds weird.

    • Re:Nanoparticles? (Score:3, Informative)

      by TGK ( 262438 )
      A little more background....

      Cancer cells divide more rapidly than normal cells (that's part of what makes them cancer). To divide they need to synthesize DNA and to do that they need that tasty looking folate you talked about.

      Thus, cancer cells absorb more folate than normal cells.

      Traditional chemotherapy drugs attack dividing cells, exploiting the conditions present in a dividing cell to kill it. Because cancer cells are dividing more often than normal cells, they are disproportionately targeted. Poo

      • This new technology incorporates the same kinds of drugs, but makes cancer cells more likely to absorb the drug, making it even more biased towards killing off cancer cells. Normal cells will absorb at a slower rate and will still be largely unaffected unless they are dividing. Cancer cells will absorb more, and be hit harder by the drug.

        I realize this has been adequately explained already, but I've come up with an insane analogy, and can't resist.

        Suppose it takes 10 units of poison to kill a Muppet

        • That's a great anology. My favorite part is your scientific rigor in explaining the shortcomings of the analogy. The thing I want to know is -- can cancer cells eat cookies, or do they just smash them over their face like cookie monster does?
      • Doesn't this previous article [slashdot.org] point out a flaw in that plan?

        The "maths cures cancer" research said that most(?) cancers don't grow exponentially (ie throughout their volume), but the dividing cells are just the outer layer of the cancer; presumably the inner cells are starved of resources.

        Hence, the old growth-directed chemo was only tackling the outer layer of the cancer, giving time for the remaining cells to develop drug resistance, etc.

        The new approach sounds like it's still only tackling the outer l
        • You're thinking of cancer as a symetrical sphere. It's not always (or even usualy) like that. For starters, a blood cancer (leukemia) makes up a good sized chunk of the cancer diagnoses each year. Chemo is extremely effective against leukemias.

          Secondly, most cancers of which you speak can be addressed through radiological and surgical procedures, leaving only the outer fringe to be mopped up by Chemo.

      • What I'm wondering is given how fast cancer cells replicate, how long will it take before a mutant cell forms that doesn't need folate and that spreads?

        I mean, this is FANTASTIC technology and all, but Darwin still applies, right?

  • How it works (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kainaw ( 676073 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:28AM (#12841365) Homepage Journal
    In case you are like me and you just want to know how they targetted the cancer cells, this is a very brief rundown:

    All cells require folate to survive. Cancer cells suck up folate like it's crack. They put the poison in the folate. All cells absorb some of the poisoned folate. Cancer cells absorb most of it.

    Pretty nice idea, but it made me wonder about the push to get expectent mothers to take excessive amounts of folic acid (folate). Does that make them more prone to cancer by giving the cancer cells extra food?


    • They put the poison in the folate.

      Actually, strictly speaking, they put the poison next to the folate. That's what the nanotech dendrimers are for...to provide a means to mount two substances next to each other that wouldn't naturally combine.

    • Does that make them more prone to cancer by giving the cancer cells extra food?

      Umm.... you'd already have cancer if you were feeding the cancer cells extra food, right?

    • Re:How it works (Score:3, Informative)

      by dannyitc ( 892023 )
      Folate is a molecule needed for DNA synthesis. Cancer cells need more of it because they are multiplying uncontrolled and therefore are synthesizing much more DNA than regular cells. Folate in itself, however, is not a mutagen, which is required to disrupt the DNA in a healthy cell to make it become cancerous. Actually, increased folate intake has shown to decrease instances of many types of cancer because folate deficiency is a main cause of error in DNA synthesis.
    • Does that make them more prone to cancer by giving the cancer cells extra food?

      Are you more prone to being attacked by feral monkeys if you keep bananas in the house?

      Pregnant women are more susceptible to some kinds of cancer, but primarily because of the hormonal changes they undergo.

      In the case of folate, perhaps an existing cancer could be made worse, but given that it's an essential nutrient eliminating folate from your diet in order to remain cancer-free isn't a very practical idea.

    • ... Pretty nice idea, but it made me wonder about the push to get expectent mothers to take excessive amounts of folic acid (folate). Does that make them more prone to cancer by giving the cancer cells extra food? ...

      My understanding is that folic acid is recommended for pregnant women due to the very significant benefit in directly causing a big reduction in birth defects :

      http://www.drdonnica.com/today/00007974.htm [drdonnica.com]
      (You can do a quick google for more)

      This is in very modest amounts - the benefit is gre
    • Pretty nice idea, but it made me wonder about the push to get expectent mothers to take excessive amounts of folic acid (folate). Does that make them more prone to cancer by giving the cancer cells extra food?

      The embryo has a growth rate comparable to cancer, and that's not the only similarity. Medicines which caused malformation of the fetus (due to their inhibition of blood vessels) can be used effectively to prevent cancer growth.

      An expecting woman usually has to wait till the baby is born to start ta
    • Expectant mothers are suggested to take folate supplements because they DO have a tumor growing inside of them. It just happens to be developing hands and toes and a genetic predisposition towards either windows, unix, or macs.

      You have to remember that a single cell is growing into an 8 pound lump of flesh, bone, etc in an approximately 9 month period. That's got most cancer growth rates beat by a longshot. And because folate is key for cell division, it is vital for mothers to keep their folate intake hi

      • Expectant mothers are suggested to take folate supplements because they DO have a tumor growing inside of them. It just happens to be developing hands and toes and a genetic predisposition towards either windows, unix, or macs.

        That has got to be the funniest definition of pregnancy I've ever read, and me without mod points...

  • We mentioned this long back at PedsDoc.com (http://www.pedsdoc.com/index.php?name=News&file= a rticle&sid=77 [pedsdoc.com])
    Again when you are considering trials in humans... it is a little premature to say whether any technology will be used on humans soon(or later)
    For e.g.
    More incremental work, with the goal of increasing the precision of the treatment and reducing the chance of side effects, is necessary before any kind of treatment can be tested in humans.
    In a related trail, (refer: http://www.pedsdoc.c [pedsdoc.com]

    • Re:OLD NEWS.. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "In a related trail, (refer: http://www.pedsdoc.com/index.php?name=News&file=ar [pedsdoc.com] ticle&sid=12 [pedsdoc.com]) in 1999, 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger died during a gene therapy clinical trial at the University of Pennsylvania...."

      Related how? The study from TFA is a directed drug delivery study using as a carrier a non-immunogenic (in mice, anyway) man-made dendromer. The Gelsinger trial was a gene therapy trial using adenovirus (a common cold virus) as a vector to carry corrective DNA to cells. II
  • One nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter, which means it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair.

    It's nice of them to break that down into terms the average person can understand. Now, if only they could break down the mass of the particles into Volkswagons (nano-Volkswagons?) and discuss how many Libraries of Congress worth of data went into this research, I'll have a better idea of what's really going on.

    They do get bonus points for using the word

  • In a Related Story... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Evil W1zard ( 832703 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:31AM (#12841403) Journal
    Protesters stripped down naked to protest the University of Michigan's support of nanotechnology. One protester stated, "Nanotechnology is bad because it is umm, err... Nevermind I am just gonna get naked cuz its bad."

  • Wow, really wow. (Score:5, Informative)

    by borkus ( 179118 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:32AM (#12841408) Homepage
    Most folks know someone either in their family or circle of friends who's had chemotherapy. Depending on the level of treatment, it can be grueling. The impressive quote from the story is this -
    the nanoparticle-based therapy using folic acid and methotrexate was 10 times more effective at delaying tumor growth than the drug given alone. Nanoparticle treatment also proved to be far less toxic to mice in the study than the anticancer drug alone
    Less toxic and 10 times more effective (possibly requiring fewer treatments). I wonder if that could make it a viable treatment alternative for inoperably cancers.

    Lastly, some folks asked about what happens to all those dendrimers when they've done their job.
    The results showed that the kidneys quickly filtered free nanoparticles from blood and eliminated them in urine. The researchers found no evidence that nanoparticles were able to leave the bloodstream and enter the brain.
    • "The results showed that the kidneys quickly filtered free nanoparticles from blood and eliminated them in urine. The researchers found no evidence that nanoparticles were able to leave the bloodstream and enter the brain."

      So does this effectively mean that all nanoparticles of that size are safe to use in the body? I always wonder if it is advances like these that will help open up the floodgate for the REAL nano-medicine that will inevitably come.

  • This is the kind of shit that makes me want to shout "M Go Blue!" Seriously, they should have pep rallies for the U of M medical center. I'd buy tickets, if they had beer.
    • University of Michigan's alumni and researchers prove this every day in the field of academia and industry.
      Most current examples are Larry Page of Google and Tony Fadell creator of the iPod.

      What I don't understand is how Brown University is consistently ranked higher than UofM in the US News & World Report every year. When is the last time you heard anything from Brown University for innovative research or their professors brought in as an expert in the fields of medicine, engineering, law ...etc e

      • It's systematic bias, which may or may not be deliberately skewed towards Ivy league, but is anyway. One of the metrics USN&WR uses is alumni donations. Rich folk attending private universities tend to donate more, so they get a boost. The rankings aren't utter crap, but it's really hard to say that the #4 is definitively better than the #7 or what have you.

        This is similar to how USN&WR ranked Rochester, MN as the best place to live for like five years in a row. One of their metrics was "Doctor

  • Medical nanotech (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:53AM (#12841623) Journal
    Nice to see this start to happen.

    Based on what I understand of nano-tech and the human body, I think we're going to see a lot more of this, and this will be the first medical nanotech revolution: Creating drugs that are targetted only at the things they are supposed to affect.

    Imagine wrapping, say, kidney drugs in a nanotech container that only opens in the kindeys, and is otherwise harmless. Or imagine an anti-inflammatory that only targets inflamed areas.

    This will cut down a lot on undesirable side-effects caused by flooding the entire body with something to affect .1% of it, and also enable us to up the dose as relevant only to the affected parts.

    This obviously doesn't apply to everything, but this is the first advance I expect to actually get used. We're a long way from lil' machines that can safely clean out plaque from our arteries (though we recently saw some advances towards doing it unsafely this last week), but this is quite doable, I think.

    • Re:Medical nanotech (Score:2, Informative)

      by maggard ( 5579 )

      Based on what I understand of nano-tech and the human body, I think we're going to see a lot more of this, and this will be the first medical nanotech revolution: Creating drugs that are targetted only at the things they are supposed to affect.

      Except it's not.

      These nano-particles with Folic Acid go into cells all over the body along (though apparently don't cross the blood/brain barrier). It's just that cancer cells pull in more FA, thus more nano-particles, thus more nanoparticle chemotherapy paylo

      • Except it's not.

        Yes it is.

        Targetting doesn't have to be 100% to be effective, you know.

        Thank God not every member of the human race bitches when technology merely improves, and fails to attain 100% perfection.

        Shades of grey, perhaps you've heard of them?
  • This is a continuation of efforts to deliver drugs more specifically to the target using polymers, micelles, etc.

    http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8034/8034drugde livery.html [acs.org]

  • Okay, so my questions are: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sialagogue ( 246874 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {eugogalais}> on Friday June 17, 2005 @09:57AM (#12841678)
    From the article:

    "The drug delivery vehicle used by U-M scientists is a manmade polymer molecule called a dendrimer."

    Is this a biodegradable polymer?

    Dendrimers have a tree-like structure with many branches where scientists can attach a variety of molecules, including drugs.

    How hard is it to attach molecules to these tree-like structures? If these polymer dendrimer are exposed to various other molecules will some bond naturally, or do they have to be tailored to a specific molecule?

    ...scientists injected dendrimers with fluorescent tags into the bloodstream of laboratory mice to determine where they would be retained in the body. The results showed that the kidneys quickly filtered free nanoparticles from blood and eliminated them in urine.

    Does that mean that in potential future patients, any free/unabsorbed nanoparticles will be excreted into the public sewage systems, and being (I assume) unfilterable, thereby enter the earths water cycle?

    So when you put those together, will these nanoparticles be able to float freely in our oceans and rivers, their dendrimers bonding with molecules found in nature, and then if conditions are right potentially take those molecules inside our cell walls?

    I know - the actual number of these things for cancer patients will be really small, but workable techniques tend to get expanded, and if they don't break down they'll just pile up over time. I'm not qualified to do anything but ask these questions, I'm just wondering whether there's any reasonable risk that once these hit the outside world they could turn around and be just as effective at delivering cancer-causing agents they pick up randomly from the environment.

    • There comes a time when you need to put paranoia aside in favor of helping people now. If you have a polymer particle that is diluted first into the human blood system to such low levels that it doesn't harm the human, then dilute it again the sewage system, then again into the ocean, then again into rain, then again into a lake, then through the water purification system, then finally into your tap water, and of those few that make it in, only the ones functionalized with something harmful need to be worr

  • Nanometers (Score:3, Funny)

    by Citizen of Earth ( 569446 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @10:14AM (#12841849)
    it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair.

    Yeah, but you would never get that many in a row a one time. They are like cats!
  • This wonderful treatment, if proven fully effective in the next couple of years, will be available sometime in the year 2052 With it's fancy patent scheme it will only cost the average person $2.3 million per year for treatment.

    Looks like "The rest of us" are just going to have to die of cancer since we won't be able to afford treatment anyways.

  • I sent the link to my wife, an Oncology Nurse Practitioner. She said that this type of transport mechanism isn't all that new.

    She went on to say that they've already packaged Taxol (a breast CA chemo) in a similar way and supplied this link for more info. It's called Abraxane [news-medical.net].
    • nurse smurse...

      Abraxane is a fancy new package for a well known drug (taxol) it has nothing to do with the treatment in the article. What it does is reduce the complications with taxol treament, but not the efficiency. It allows for the dose to be increased, and thereby is more efficient

      The treatment in the article is something quite difrent, it increases the concentration in the target/cancer cells. This reduces the side effects of the treatment. Its new and it is brilliant.

      Yes my spelling sucks..

  • Timing is important here (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Calibax ( 151875 ) * on Friday June 17, 2005 @11:29AM (#12842809)
    As a person recently diagnosed with cancer and currently in chemo, I find more than passing interest in this story. Although, very clearly the approach described here isn't going to help me, I've spent a lot of time researching cancer therapies of various types and I feel qualifed to comment.

    Cancer isn't one disease, it's a group of related diseases. A solution that works for say breast cancer may or may not work for other cancers. The idea of targetting cancer cells specifically for apoptosis (cell death) isn't new but the idea of using a delivery vehicle that can have a deadly payload seems to be somewhat novel.

    There are a number of other drugs in development that might have a similar effect. Also there are human clinical trials already in progress for methods of creating a vaccine tailored to a specific person by using that person's tumor. Given that a phase 1 trial of the approach described in the article will not start for two years and that trials generally take at least 7 years before approval, it's likely that other equally novel delivery methods will be approved substantially before this one. This approach will have to show it's better than the others that will be on the market already when approval time comes along.

    With some popular cancers such as breast and colorectal cancers, it's quite likely that there will be better therapies. However, if this approach can be targetted to the really deadly cancers (like lung and ovarian cancers) or the many cancers that don't have any good treatment options, this could be a real winner. If you can wait long enough before getting your disease.
  • "The University of Michigan has filed a patent application on targeted nanoparticle technology. A licensing agreement is currently being negotiated with Avidimer Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company in Ann Arbor , Mich. Baker holds a significant financial interest in the company."

    This will not be a 'cure' for cancer. It will be another 'treatment'.

    Cures are not profitable. Treatments are.
  • nanotech trojan horses kill you.

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