Magnets Made By Soil Bacteria Offer Hope For Breast and Prostate Cancer (theguardian.com) 17
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists are developing magnetically guided microscopic projectiles that can be injected into patients' blood to attack breast, prostate and other tumors. The project -- led by researchers at Sheffield University -- builds on progress in two key medical fields. The first involves viruses that specifically attack tumors. The second focuses on soil bacteria that manufacture magnets which they use to align themselves in the Earth's magnetic field.
The anti-cancer viruses that are being exploited by the Sheffield group -- who have been funded by Cancer Research UK -- are known as oncolytic viruses. They occur naturally but can also be modified to improve their efficacy and to limit the chances of them infecting healthy cells. [...] "The problem is that oncolytic viruses attract the attention of the body's immune defenses and only skin-deep tumors can be tackled this way before the viruses are blocked fairly quickly by our cell defenses," said Dr Faith Howard, another project leader. A solution, the scientists say, is to coat the viruses in magnetic particles. Injected into the blood, these microscopic projectiles could then be directed quickly to a tumor -- by using magnets placed over a patient's body -- before their progress can be blocked by immune defenses.
An oncolytic virus had a diameter of about 180 nanometers while the magnets needed to be about 50 nanometers in size, added Howard. (A nanometre is a billionth of a meter.) "These tiny magnets could be made in the laboratory but we have found bacteria do a better job of manufacturing them than we could," she added. Some species of soil bacteria synthesize iron oxide nanoparticles that are called magnetosomes. These are used as compasses that allow the microbes to navigate in Earth's magnetic field and help them find optimum conditions for their growth and survival. "These microscopic magnets they make are perfectly shaped and ideally suited to the microscopic packages we need to target deep cancers," Howard said.
The anti-cancer viruses that are being exploited by the Sheffield group -- who have been funded by Cancer Research UK -- are known as oncolytic viruses. They occur naturally but can also be modified to improve their efficacy and to limit the chances of them infecting healthy cells. [...] "The problem is that oncolytic viruses attract the attention of the body's immune defenses and only skin-deep tumors can be tackled this way before the viruses are blocked fairly quickly by our cell defenses," said Dr Faith Howard, another project leader. A solution, the scientists say, is to coat the viruses in magnetic particles. Injected into the blood, these microscopic projectiles could then be directed quickly to a tumor -- by using magnets placed over a patient's body -- before their progress can be blocked by immune defenses.
An oncolytic virus had a diameter of about 180 nanometers while the magnets needed to be about 50 nanometers in size, added Howard. (A nanometre is a billionth of a meter.) "These tiny magnets could be made in the laboratory but we have found bacteria do a better job of manufacturing them than we could," she added. Some species of soil bacteria synthesize iron oxide nanoparticles that are called magnetosomes. These are used as compasses that allow the microbes to navigate in Earth's magnetic field and help them find optimum conditions for their growth and survival. "These microscopic magnets they make are perfectly shaped and ideally suited to the microscopic packages we need to target deep cancers," Howard said.
Is this a dupe (Score:2)
I remember seeing something like this earlier today.
Sounded like quackery
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You mean this?
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
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Yep its a dupe of my submission published two days ago. Interesting tech/biology crossover.
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Sounded like quackery
It's almost as if you don't read more than the title of the articles before posting about them.
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"It's almost as if you don't read more than the title of the articles before posting about them."
He's not a newbie then.
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It's because magnets have two poles. The first article was about the south pole, and this one is about the north pole.
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Dirt collected from Easter Island led to the development of an anti-rejection drug.
Hope this pans out (Score:2)
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We are definately further along than we where a decade ago. Recently my dad had a punchup with a fairly aggressive strain of prostate cancer, and with the treatments available 10-15 years ago, we would have lost him, but the treatment program he got worked really well, and that was without subjecting him to chemo (a less than fun prospect for anyone) or requiring they exise the prostate (A somewhat drastic solution, that can leave someone requiring nappies and a surprisingly high chance of failing). This wa
Discuss the duping, not the story (Score:1)
While interesting, I propose NOT to discuss subject matter on duped stories, only the fact that it was a dupe. Dupes should be ignored. And any discussion should be about how stupid the editors are for posting dupes, how recent the original story came along, how easy it was to spot the dupe, etc. To discuss the subject matter: previous story is recent enough & still open for comments.
I mean sure, if a subject discussed months or years ago suddenly picks up renewed interest, or there are new developme
Immune evasion? (Score:2)
This seems very Rube Goldberg to me, like building a radio-controlled cruise missile to precisely deliver a small radio-controlled firecracker into someone's gym shorts without them noticing. It's really cool to watch, but I feel like there has to be a simpler approach. :-)
I'm wondering if a better approach might be making the oncolytic viruses better able to avoid attracting the attention of the immune system in the first place.
IIRC, most viruses get "caught" because they tell cells to do something that
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This is the beginnings of practical medical nanotechnology. I sense that this need not be limited to delivering a viral payload, and I suspect that any cancer treatment will prove more effective if it can be delivered directly to the cancerous cells instead of being distributed throughout the body.
Yes, it probably is better to deliver cancer treatment directly to the cancerous cells. But this reminds me of the somewhat apocryphal discussion of NASA inventing a pen that can write in zero gravity and Russia using a pencil. Presumably the most straightforward way to deliver cancer treatment directly to a rumor is with a needle. That's how they deliver radioactive "pellets" for prostate cancer, for example.
I mean, there are situations where that won't work, such as bone metastases, brain tumors, and h
Motivation for medical students (Score:1)