New Cancer Cure: Nanoparticles!

[3113]

Cool!

LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists are developing ways to use nanoparticles as tiny magnets that can heat up and kill cancer cells without harming healthy cells around them. The researchers have found that iron-oxide nanoparticles can be attached to cancer-seeking antibodies, or injected into cancer-seeking stem cells, which take them straight to the tumors they need to kill. Heating the cells to just 5 or 6 degrees Celsius above body temperature, in a new device called a magnetic alternating current hyperthermia (MACH) machine, can kill the cancer cells.

...The scientists said the work was at an early stage and no tests had yet been done on humans. They predicted another decade of developing, refining and testing the techniques before they could be licensed to treat cancer. "We are aiming to be ready to go to clinical trials at the end of three years," said Quentin Pankhurst, professor of physics at UCL.

Full Story here.

 

[rgraham666]

Very cool.

If you want to read a good book about nanotech and the effects it will have on society I recommend The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. It absolutely rocked.

 

[JamesSD]

Nifty, but there are many treatments and cures for cancer that are/were much further along and never really panned out for various reasons. Cancer is a tricky bugger of a disease, for a number of reasons. I'm always happy to see new treatment strategies emerge, but until they go to clinical trials they're mostly just happy daydreams.

 

[trysail]

Nifty, but there are many treatments and cures for cancer that are/were much further along and never really panned out for various reasons. Cancer is a tricky bugger of a disease, for a number of reasons. I'm always happy to see new treatment strategies emerge, but until they go to clinical trials they're mostly just happy daydreams.

You are very, very right. Its complexity has so far defeated the efforts of forty years of millions of man hours and untold trillions of dollars.

Every time someone has trumpeted "cancer cure" in all those years, they've been wrong.

 

[Handley_Page]

Very true, but the occasional announcement of this or that new treatment may serve to give hope to those for whom Cancer is a real fear.

It strikes me that the more "cures" are suggested, the more is known about cancer. I recall a TV programme which included a reference to a drug which "cut off the blood supply to the tumour". The snag was that they didn't know how to deliver it; direct injection didn't work. But they got it right in the end. Payback was that it did not work for so many types of cancer.

So if nano particles of iron look like they might work, I say give it a go ! All tht needs doing it getting it into the tumour.

 

[Katyusha]

You are very, very right. Its complexity has so far defeated the efforts of forty years of millions of man hours and untold trillions of dollars.

Every time someone has trumpeted "cancer cure" in all those years, they've been wrong.

That has a bit to do with the fact that cancer is still treated as a single disease, when it's actually a complicated bunch of diseases. Has anyone ever wondered why, say, some breast cancers will respond to conventional treatment but not new experimental treatment, or vice versa? Or why some breast cancers won't respond to anything at all? Why some are extremely aggressive and can progress to stage 4 within a matter of months, treatment or no, while others can take years to progress to that? There are similarities between the types of tumors that develop in different organs...it'd probably help them out a lot if they'd re-classify them into groups like type A, type B, and so on, and formally diagnose you with "Type A cancer of the breast," instead of "breast cancer." It'd give oncologists the ability to better pinpoint the ideal way to start treatment, instead of a lot of the trial and error that still goes on.

Of course there are other things that play into this, but this is one of the reasons they can't find a cure. There won't be any single cure. There'll be a zillion different cures.

 

[trysail]

Very true, but the occasional announcement of this or that new treatment may serve to give hope to those for whom Cancer is a real fear.

It strikes me that the more "cures" are suggested, the more is known about cancer. I recall a TV programme which included a reference to a drug which "cut off the blood supply to the tumour".** The snag was that they didn't know how to deliver it; direct injection didn't work. But they got it right in the end. Payback was that it did not work for so many types of cancer.

So if nano particles of iron look like they might work, I say give it a go ! All tht needs doing it getting it into the tumour.

You are correct. My only point is "don't hold your breath." Medical research is driven by a fair dose of competition; like other aspects of life, in the interest of self-promotion a few researchers have a regrettable tendency to shoot their mouths off prematurely. There was a fellow at Johns Hopkins in the '90s who had an unfortunate habit, every two years, of announcing that he had "the cure." His colleagues eventually grew to discount his subsequent pronouncements and both his funding and career withered.

Angiogenesis** inhibition, pioneered by Judah Folkman, is the fundamental concept underlying several successful cancer drugs— the most widely-known of which is Roche's Avastin. Folkman's novel approach did not meet with either early acclamation by his fellow scientists or immediate success. He "wandered in the desert" for many years until efficacy was demonstrated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiogenesis#Tumor_angiogenesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_Folkman