Researchers Develop Cancer-Targetting Hybrid Molecule

New York researchers have developed a hybrid molecule that can target cancer cells, which they believe shows promise in the fight against breast cancer. The team created a composite nanoparticle that can transport chemotherapeutic agents, in a technique that more than doubled the uptake of an anti-inflammatory compound that inhibits cancer cell growth when directly applied to a tumor. The composite nanoparticle "can load up with these drugs, carry them to malignant cells, and unload them where they can do the most damage with the least amount of harm to the patient," according to a statement from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, with one of the researchers summarizing it as a hybird molecule that "can carry higher payloads, enabling it to deliver more drug."

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[BitZtream]

The best part is that both of you guys think you're funny. Thats the best part of your jokes.

What does that tell you about them?

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[Applehu Akbar]

OR...planning a vacation in India to have the treatment.

Inhibit growth != sustainable solution

[mark-t]

Okay, so they can slow the growth rate of the tumor, perhaps even to levels such that the tumor might not even be technically malignant anymore, but it's still there... taking up space in the body, and waiting to become malignant again if its growth should ever resume, presumably some time after treatment has stopped. The cancerous cells still need to be removed from the body, and would require a lumpectomy, at least. Honestly, I'm not sure what significant advantages this offers for breast cancer in the first place. A real revolution would be something that non-invasively eradicates cancer cells while the leaving healthy ones intact and unaffected.

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[Livius]

As usual, "journalists" are overstating the results, but it's still progress. Someday it may be the basis of an effective treatment.

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[ThePyro]

Plenty of tumors are inoperable. If treatment can delay growth while simultaneously improving quality of life (i.e. by not causing unpleasant side effects associated with other forms of chemotherapy), then surely that's a worthwhile goal?

We can't exactly cure HIV, either, but modern drugs allow infected individuals to live for years longer than they used to.

Speed it up!

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with all this stuff is that it takes years to get to human testing. We desperately need a speed up through simulation. We tech-guys should be able to help with that.

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[Applehu Akbar]

"Isn't that what the whole @home thing was about? Cloud computing using everybody's spare processor cycles to solve complex problems?"

Except that all those extra processor cycles once being used for protein folding are now being used to mine Bitcoin.

Whoops

[rebelwarlock]

On my first read of the headline, I mistook that hyphen for an em dash and thought, "What the fuck, guys?"