First Anti-Cancer Nanoparticle Trial On Humans a Success 260
An anonymous reader writes "Nanoparticles have been able to disable cancerous cells in living human bodies for the first time. The results are perfect so far, killing tumors with no side effects whatsoever. Mark Davis, project leader at CalTech, says that 'it sneaks in, evades the immune system, delivers the siRNA, and the disassembled components exit out.' Truly amazing."
Targetting (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Targetting (Score:4, Insightful)
They have RNA that attaches to cancerous and only cancerous cells. Of course, there are types of cancer that wont "bind" with this thingies, but supposedly, if I remeber correctly, they are the rarest.
Re:Targetting (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Targetting (Score:4, Interesting)
Incorrect. There are significant physiological and genetic differences between cancerous cells and normal cells. It would be entirely possible to target the RNA sequence to only bind to malignant cells and ignore normal ones.
Yeah but chemotherapy and radiotherapy work the same way. The problem is that the characteristic of cancerous cells they bind to is the fact that they grow fast. The problem is that these treatments also damage normally fast growing tissues. My father in law lost all his bone marrow that way.
I hope that these nanoparticles don't bind to any other crucial tissues.
Re:Targetting (Score:5, Informative)
Well, the summary says that the results have been perfect so far, so that's a real good sign. Frankly something like this sounds too good to be true, but every once and a while breakthroughs do happen, so we can hope!
Re:Targetting (Score:5, Informative)
It would be entirely possible to target the RNA sequence to only bind to malignant cells and ignore normal ones.
Yeah but chemotherapy and radiotherapy work the same way. The problem is that the characteristic of cancerous cells they bind to is the fact that they grow fast.
No they don't work the same way. Radiotherapy, and most current gen chemotheraputics, work against all dividing cells. It sounds like these nanoparticles use a specific protein (NOT rna) to bind to the cancer cell, then once inside they cause RNAi (this is where the RNA comes in) to knock down a specific gene transcript.
I obviously don't know the specifics, but if you make a nanoparticle that binds to and is taken up by cells expressing a specific growth factor, that's -not- going to be taken up by all cells. There are a lot of growth factors, and often in cancers, growth factor receptors are expressed far more than they normally are. So the targets are found only on some cell types, and there are hundreds more on the cancer cells than the healthy cells.
Furthermore, you could target individual genes to be knocked down by the RNAi effect, potentially genes that aren't even expressed by the normal cells which are expressing the receptor you're targeting. I'd guess for maximal efficiency, you'd be targeting housekeeping genes that all cells needed, but in principle you could make it a gene that cancer specifically needed.
Both levels of specificity, even if they're not used, are a far cry from "damage every dividing cell and hope you kill the cancer before you kill the dividing tissues the patient needs to survive." And they don't actually use RNA to bind to the cell, they use protein to target the cell and RNA once inside the cell to target the specific gene. ... by the way, I am not a molecular cancer biologist.
Re:Targetting (Score:5, Informative)
How else would you define targeting in this context other than to mean only binding to cancerous cells? It seems you are implying that targeting can only refer to conscious 'aiming', but that is only a subset of things that can be considered targeted.
Targeted can mean 'select as an object of attention or attack'. That is what they are doing when the design a drug.. selecting cancer cells for attack, and then designing the drug so it will only effect those cells. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_design [wikipedia.org]
Targeted drugs DO mean something specific in pharmacology.
Re:Targetting (Score:5, Funny)
Great post. But please, can we stop using effect as a verb?
No. We only need to effect such a change such that people stop using the verb "to effect" incorrectly.
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Great post. But please, can we stop using effect as a verb?
And how exactly do you expect us to effect this change?
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Don't fall into the trap (and then drag clueless yet for some reason pedantic mods with you). Effect can be a verb and affect can be a noun. Look them both up.
Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares how the particles get inside the cancer cells? Does it matter if we use microscopic needles and inject every single cancer cell or just throw a bunch of square pegs at square holes and hope for the best?
The end result is that the medicine winds up where it should be, and doesn't seem to be accumulating where it shouldn't.
BTW, in the above referenced Nature article [nature.com] it says this:
When the components are mixed together in water, they assemble into particles about 70 nanometres in diameter. The researchers can then administer the nanoparticles into the bloodstream of patients, where the particles circulate until they encounter 'leaky' blood vessels that supply the tumours with blood. The particles then pass through the vessels to the tumour, where they bind to the cell and are then absorbed.
So maybe that counts as targeted. Maybe not. I don't care either way - it works, regardless of semantics.
Re:Targetting (Score:4, Informative)
I see your point that this does not seem like the ordinary concept of targeting. But in pharmacology that is exactly what targeting is.
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The same way that so-called "targeted" painkillers work: they don't.
Every time I see that damn Nurofen advert I cringe
In addition, Davis and his colleagues were able to show that the higher the nanoparticle dose administered to the patient, the higher the number of particles found inside the tumor cells—the first example of this kind of dose-dependent response using targeted nanoparticles.
Either I'm missing something really important or this is the biggest 'Well, Duh!' moment I've had this year
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No, I didn't read the article.
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In addition, Davis and his colleagues were able to show that the higher the nanoparticle dose administered to the patient, the higher the number of particles found inside the tumor cells—the first example of this kind of dose-dependent response using targeted nanoparticles.
Why is this the first example of the concentration of nanoparticles showing a correlation with the initial dose? To me it seems obvious that this would happen, so I'm curious as to what normally prevents this.
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So, put the patient under with general anesthetic and inject the nanoparticles directly into the tumors. Still cheaper, lower risk, and more efficient [outpatient] treatment than current cancer treatments.
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Re:Targetting (Score:5, Informative)
Why is this the first example of the concentration of nanoparticles showing a correlation with the initial dose? To me it seems obvious that this would happen, so I'm curious as to what normally prevents this.
The dose-response characteristics of a substance carries important information about its pharmacokinetics, such as how rapidly it is metabolized and excreted. It is NOT obvious that increasing dose always results in increased concentration in the targeted tissue(s), just as it is the case in chemical reactions in which increasing the proportion of one reagent may not necessarily increase the yield. For example, increasing dosage may also increase hepatic clearance. What the researchers demonstrated basically boils down to this: the nanoparticles' activity is highly specific to the tumor cells and does not get "broken down" or excreted proportionally higher as the dose increases. Such characteristics are highly desirable.
Re:Targetting (Score:5, Informative)
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I'd guess that normal cells don't have as many, because they don't replicate as fast. But some fast-replicating cells (hair, some blood cells, etc) might have a few. Note, chemo also targets fast-replicating cells, which is why it kills cancer and makes your hair fall out.
So this would be a suped-up chemo treatment, and hopefully a bit more specific.
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So does radiotherapy. The problem being that fast growing tissues are the ones you absolutely need from day to day. Bone marrow and digestive system tissue are other examples.
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That sounds great but I wonder about these software virus detectors which see signatures in legitimate files. It depends on the number of permutations you are dealing with I suppose.
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Not just cancer! (Score:5, Informative)
From comments on TFA, "The Lab" writes: "a science editor would be more capable of pointing out what is really exciting here, which is the ability to stop cells from producing a given protein."
I think the cancer aspect is great (if it works) but this has potential for curing a whole host of diseases.
Now we just need to figure out how to change people's DNA on the fly.
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Whoa slow down there. Do you know how long it'll take to patent the treatment for each individual disease?
Re:Not just cancer! (Score:5, Interesting)
RNAi is an ancient anti-viral defense mechanism found in everything from plants to humans. That said, I agree. Any disease that is caused by the production of a given protein could in principle be treated using a derivative of this RNAi nanoparticle technology.
Viruses come close to this, it is just a matter of expanding what they can do (eg. enlarging their payload) and reducing the incidence of side effects like severe immune reactions.
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Apparently all it really takes is a few daily hyposprays to keep the alien DNA at bay and revert your original genome.
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From comments on TFA, "The Lab" writes: "a science editor would be more capable of pointing out what is really exciting here, which is the ability to stop cells from producing a given protein."
I think the cancer aspect is great (if it works) but this has potential for curing a whole host of diseases.
Now we just need to figure out how to change people's DNA on the fly.
Does this mean that we could make the body START to produce a protein? Like... to fix the human dependency of Vitamin C in our diets?
I know I mentioned this one time on slashdot before, but it'd be super cool to fix us to being like every other animal on Earth (except Guinea Pigs) and make our own Vitamin C...
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Done. Take a normal virus, remove its dna, replace it with your replacing fragment, and inject it into the body.
I’m simplyfiying things here, but that’s it.
I’ve read about some team doing it, about 5 years ago.
Nice if true (Score:3, Insightful)
Gizmodo? Call me when a reputable publication reports on this.
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Does Slashdot count [slashdot.org]?
Re:Nice if true (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nice if true (Score:5, Funny)
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http://www.myfoxla.com/dpp/health/caltech-nanotech-cancer-research-20100321 [myfoxla.com]
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If only the noise they generated was fake, we wouldn't have to listen to it.
Re:Nice if true (Score:5, Funny)
Gizmodo? Call me when a reputable publication reports on this.
You came to Slashdot because Gizmodo isn't a reputable publication? Hehehe.
Someone call Dr. Imakurusu (Score:3, Funny)
Nanotechnology, huh?
And here I had all my money on the Murai vaccine.
SWEET SUCCESS (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SWEET SUCCESS (Score:5, Funny)
1. Start smoking, paying $$$ for cigs
2. Get cancer
3. Pay $$$ for an operation to remove cancer cells
4. ???
5. Profit ?!?
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Re:SWEET SUCCESS (Score:5, Funny)
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Hooray! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is so much win, I can hardly stand it. And I never thought I'd see the day when they'd be able to find something to kill this cancer trash. We all live in very interesting times.
Smoke 'em if you got 'em (Score:2)
No cure for cancer? pfft.
This is incredible. I hope this is the cure. (Score:2)
Its about time we solve the cancer puzzle.
The first? Hardly... (Score:3, Informative)
.
Abraxis has been around for, literally, years.
The perfect eugenics tool? (Score:2)
Hey, let's celebrate: (Score:2, Funny)
Hopefully this works on Metastatic cancer (Score:3, Interesting)
It is spelled Caltech NOT CalTech (Score:3, Informative)
http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13334 [caltech.edu]
If you cannot spell Caltech properly - please turn in your nerd card.
Simply Awesome (Score:2)
Smoke 'em if you've got 'em!
Re:Finally.. (Score:5, Funny)
... to start smoking ....
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Your battery website needs to get with the times, NIMH LSD or nothing.
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You need to get with the times. Ni-Zn overall hasvoltage much closer to alkaline cells AND higher mAh capacity, and we have nicked the problem of whiskers forming on the anode.
Now we're just waiting for it to be made in AAA size.
Re:Finally.. (Score:5, Funny)
Or "its known to the State of California to cause cancer".
I could never figure it out, so I just stay away from California.
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Well I can finally go to California, everything is known to cause cancer in California, .
Yeah just like working for the ABC [news.com.au] in Australia.
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...everything is known to cause cancer in California...
Are you saying that this nano thingy will consume the whole state?
That's because of a stupid law... (Score:5, Informative)
> everything is known to cause cancer in California... I could never figure it out, so I just stay away from California.
Everything says it causes cancer because of Proposition 65 [wikipedia.org]. Basically, if something in California is known to cause cancer (even only if ingested by the ton), you have to label it, or lawyers can sue you under a "private attorney general" law. In theory it might be a good idea, but it was implemented so that the defendant has the burden of showing that it's basically impossible to the nth degree that the thing could cause cancer in the quantities you're talking about.
This resulted in a lot of litigation where basically lawyers went around everywhere and said "Oh! You have flame-retardant furniture! Did you know it can cause cancer if you lick it?" "You're a dentist! You use drugs that can cause cancer if you administer them for a week and you didn't post a notice!"
This resulted in a plethora of notices to prevent lawsuits--notices which the public ignores because they're on everything. So in the cases where the warning is actually important, it gets ignored because there are so many.
IIRC, there have been some efforts by the AG (and some courts) to limit abuse.
damn it... (Score:2, Funny)
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It also goes to show how a carefully engineered nano-particle can be used to kill people in a rather covert way. CSI probably doesn't yet have a way to detect this stuff.
Re:Isn't this... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Isn't this... (Score:4, Funny)
Hmmm, I guess...
In the end...
It is the little things that matter
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http://ingresstech.com/~bernard/instantCSI/ [ingresstech.com]
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How long before this technology can be tuned to other types of infected cells like HIV?
From TFA: "The 70-nanometer attack bots—made with two polymers and a protein that attaches to the cancerous cell's surface—carry a piece of RNA called small-interfering RNA (siRNA), which deactivates the production of a protein, starving the malign cell to death."
Seems like once they know how to write the write 'key' for it to attach to a cell wall, the rest should be fairly do-able?
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It also goes to show how a carefully engineered nano-particle can be used to kill people in a rather covert way.
Parthos, a la Yuta! [memory-alpha.org]
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The basis of I Am Legend (the movie) was the modification of a virus to selectively treat cancer. Unless these "nano-bots" learn to replicate themselves, I think we'll be alright.
To prevent that, we'll simply engineer them with a lysine deficiency.
Re:CmdrTaco's hung like a toddler (Score:4, Insightful)
This is science, not magic.
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This is science, not magic.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C. Clarke
Re:CmdrTaco's hung like a toddler (Score:5, Funny)
Any technology which is distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Re:Too small a sample size (Score:5, Informative)
Well, what's meaningful is that they all didn't up and die, and that a bigger round of testing is to go forward.
Re:Too small a sample size (Score:4, Informative)
The point of the study is to make sure that people don't explode when the procedure is performed, or for something similarly unpleasant to happen--it's a Phase I study, not a real effectiveness trial.
Re:Too small a sample size (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention there are now at least 15 extremely happy people out there :)
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Then take a statistics class (Score:4, Informative)
As long as the subjects have the same distribution as the population, this sample can be considered representative of the population. This means that they didn't pick 15 terminal patients and didn't pick 15 100%-survival-rate patients. You can achieve quite a lot when your sample is well selected.
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You can achieve quite a lot when your sample is well selected.
Sure, but "n = 15" just means "more study needed"
By the time they get to phase 3 trials, their sample size will be a lot bigger.
Which, btw, is what makes clinical trials so expensive.
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Self reply ...
I just feel I should clarify, in order to get the perfect distribution you need a sample size at least big enough to all possible variations in the distribution in the ratios present in the population.
I.E. The samples too small to provide useful statistical results. Its just a general indicator.
If all 15 people live perfectly for a normal life after this it doesn't mean its 100% safe, it just means its highly likely to work well on a lot of people, but its entirely possible that those 15 peop
Re:Too small a sample size (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too small a sample size (Score:5, Informative)
I cannot see anything meaningful coming from such a small sample size. It has potential but obviously much more research is needed.
You can't just jump from rats to tens of thousands of humans. That's why the sample size is 15. That's why it's a Phase I trial. There are four phases of clinical pharmaceutical testing that follow preclinical (animals, in vitro, etc.) testing. Phase I normally tests a treatment in healthy humans in order to see the negative effects of the treatment (this is not necessarily the case in cancer treatments because all cancer treatments have significant negative effects). Phase I trials are only a couple dozen people, max. Successful Phase I trials allow for Phase II trials. These usually have one or two hundred people with the disease the therapy is intended to treat. In Phase II, they are mainly gathering pharmacokinetic data (half life, metabolism, volume of distribution, etc.). Phase III is where you start to see the trials you're clamoring for. These are typically done in several thousand patients, all with the disease in question. These trials are placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blind studies (the hallmark of research). Statistical analysis then allows you to determine if the therapy was effective in improving outcomes. If so, the drug goes to the FDA. 30 days later, it is officially on the market. Phase IV studies begin here, and continue perpetually. They are called post-marketing surveillance, and they study long-term effects (because previous trials are not long enough to do this), as well as very rare adverse effects (where the sample size in previous trials may have been too small to correctly detect the progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy that occurs in 0.1% of patients treated).
So don't claim the study size wasn't big enough - it wasn't supposed to be. Phase III trials are what you want. Phase I and II trials are of no interest to anyone outside of health professions, really.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for the overview of the clinical trials procedure. You clearly know a lot about it. One thing I wanted to point out is that while placebo-controlled designs are probably the most reliable, in many contexts (including a cancer treatment) it would be unethical to give patients a placebo (i.e. a treatment expected to do nothing) rather than a treatment that might actually help them.
Basically, if there is a treatment that is known to be at least somewhat effective, that's your control rather than a pl
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Nah, what you need is a good wet floor mop, shotguns run out of ammo, chainsaws run out of fuel, but a good mop will keep at least 4 people alive ^_^
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Very big ^_^.
dead . winter [deadwinter.cc] is an awesome web comic. If you haven't read it, start at the beginning [deadwinter.cc] and you will be surprised how long you keep clicking 'next.' I read well over a hundred before I had to take a break.
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I had to call in sick for a day ;)
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So, they made an artificial virus...
Fail.
Re:Artificial virus (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't see any indication that the nano-particles are self-replicating, or capable of spreading from one person to another, so you'd need to inject each target individually. It's probably easier just to shoot them.
Plus, if I understand correctly, cultural conceptions of race don't map very well to genetic differences. So finding a race-specific gene to target might be harder than you'd think.
Re:Artificial virus (Score:4, Funny)
All that will accomplish is to fill the world with beautiful, bisexual nympho women who still aren't interested in you...
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I can see what could go right: stealthily delivering an array of genetic changes to women to turn them all into beautiful, bisexual nymphomaniacs.
...who brew beer.
You lucky, lucky bastard (Score:2)
You had a paperclip, a zippo, and a linoleum knife? You lucky bastard. In my day, we had to chew our cancer out with our bare teeth. My testicular cancer was particularly hard to swallow.
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Try chewing out cancer of the gums sometime, buddy.
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Politicians get special bottled water to enhance their genome however.
Most politicians I know could use some genetic enhancement...
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Hey, you really want to fight obesity, kill the corn subsidies so that we stop having high fructose corn syrup in fucking everything. That would be way more effective than unbanning ephedrine.