Stealth Attack on Cancer
You know, you can put more nanocells
on the head of a pin -- than angels.
Imagine a cancer drug that can burrow into a tumor, seal the exits and detonate a lethal dose of anti-cancer toxins, all while leaving healthy cells unscathed.
MIT researchers have designed a nanoparticle to do just that.
The dual-chamber, double-acting, drug-packing "nanocell" proved effective and safe, with prolonged survival, against two distinct forms of cancers-melanoma and Lewis lung cancer-in mice.
Just one of a number of new medical technologies and techniques in current research, this example combines nanotechnology with oncology.
The team loaded the outer membrane of the nanocell with an anti-angiogenic drug and the inner balloon with chemotherapy agents. A "stealth" surface chemistry allows the nanocells to evade the immune system, while their size (200 nanometers) makes them preferentially taken into the tumor. They are small enough to pass through tumor vessels, but too large for the pores of normal vessels.
Once the nanocell is inside the tumor, its outer membrane disintegrates, rapidly deploying the anti-angiogenic drug. The blood vessels feeding the tumor then collapse, trapping the loaded nanoparticle in the tumor, where it slowly releases the chemotherapy.
I wonder if we could construct a variation that sneaks common sense into the brains of politicians?
The presentation on Biocomputation with J. Craig Venter, Ray Kurzweil and Rodney Brooks over at www.edge.org also leads into other avenues of nanotechnology and medicine, manipulating man-made genomes, synthetic biology -- methodologies combining modern medicine with constantly-expanding computing potential. Much of this work is dedicated to removing cancer from the array of diseases "acceptable" to non-scientists and anti-science ideology.
Posted: Fri - July 29, 2005 at 06:41 AM