More Nano Weapons to Fight Cancer
Roland Piquepaille writes "In this article, the MIT Technology Review says that different new nanotools will help us to diagnose or kill cancerous tumors. 'Nanoshells' invented at Rice University could become an alternative to chemotherapy by killing only cancerous cells after injection into patients' bloodstream. And nanoparticles created at the University of Washington in Seattle could be used to noninvasively diagnose and treat brain tumors. Meanwhile, a biochemist from Brigham Young University has developed "a method for examining mutations in DNA to determine a person?s genetic predisposition for developing cancer." This overview contains more details and a diagram showing how nanoshells are conjugated with antibodies to kill cancerous cells. [Note: Previous results about nanoshells were reported here by Nanodot in February.]"
May 2nd, 2004 at 4:49 PM
A long way from a solution
Roland, you need to investigate claims further before you promote them. People in medicine have been trying to deliver specific radioactive isotopes and monoclonal antibodies to tumors for a decade or more. The problem is that tumors usually do not have precise surface molecules that identify them as a cancer. If they did then the immune system would eliminate them. Is there a subset of tumors with common molecules that can be attacked? Most probably yes — just this week gefitinib/Iressa(TM) was shown to be effective against non-small cell lung cancer. But it only works in 10% of lung cancer cases!
The approach that Dr. Halas has may be reasonable for breast cancer or skin cancer. But it is highly questionable whether it would be useful for liver or brain cancer (where light or IR are unlikely to be able to penetrate). In addition there is nothing in the MIT Tech Review article that explains why nanoshells kill only cancer cells. It does not suggest that nanoshells prefer to target cancer cells (and why they would do so) and as a result one should expect the same results from the use of nanoshells that one gets with chemotherapy (healthy tissue damage in the process of killing cancer cells).
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:55 PM
[...] Foresight Nanotech Institute has recently developed new chemicals that they believe will be extremely helpful in the treatment of cancer. They feel that the recent found ‘nanotools’, will help us to diagnose or kill cancerous tumors. ‘Nanoshells’ invented at Rice University are touted in their blog as becoming the next alternative to chemotherapy because they kill only cancerous cells after injection into patients’ bloodstream. Thus they might be a noninvasive way to not only treat, but diagnose brain tumors. [...]
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:33 PM
Correction to above comment: Foresight reports on such developments, but does not make the developments ourselves. –Christine Peterson