First Anti-Cancer Nanoparticle Trial on Humans a Success
Cristian Mircioiu
This Is the Future of the Fight Against Cancer
Look close. You may be staring at the end of cancer. Those tiny black dots are nanobots delivering a lethal blow to a cancerous cell, effectively killing it. The first trial on humans have been a success, with no side-effects:
It sneaks in, evades the immune system, delivers the siRNA, and the disassembled components exit out.
Those are the words of Mark Davis, head of the research team that created the nanobot anti-cancer army at the California Institute of Technology. According to a study to be published in Nature, Davis' team has discovered a clean, safe way to deliver RNAi sequences to cancerous cells. RNAi (Ribonucleic acid interference) is a technique that attacks specific genes in malign cells, disabling functions inside and killing them.
The 70-nanometer attack bots—made with two polymers and a protein that attaches to the cancerous cell's surface—carry a piece of RNA called small-interfering RNA (siRNA), which deactivates the production of a protein, starving the malign cell to death. Once it has delivered its lethal blow, the nanoparticle breaks down into tiny pieces that get eliminated by the body in the urine.
The most amazing thing is that you can send as many of these soldiers as you want, and they will keep attaching to the bad guys, killing them left, right, and center, and stopping tumors. According to Davis, "the more [they] put in, the more ends up where they are supposed to be, in tumour cells." While they will have to finish the trials to make sure that there are no side-effects whatsoever, the team is very happy with the successful results and it's excited about what's coming:
What's so exciting is that virtually any gene can be targeted now. Every protein now is druggable. My hope is to make tumours melt away while maintaining a high quality of life for the patients. We're moving another step closer to being able to do that now.
Hopefully, they will be right. [Caltech via Nature]
Send an email to Jesus Diaz, the author of this post, at je...@gizmodo.com.
I think this is a fine writeup but a science editor would be more capable of pointing out what is really exciting here, which is the ability to stop cells from producing a given protein.
The editor could then point out this has applications in many areas of health. Cancer is what everyone talks about because it is serious and gets funding but this could be fun as well. One idea that comes to mind is knocking down levels of myostatin, which restricts muscle growth. With that gone, people could pack on serious muscles.
The editor could also point out that nanotech particles behave differently from both molecules and cells, and distribute themselves in as of yet not understood ways. This has led to some serious health concerns and there is some evidence of the dangers of any objects on the nano scale.
Most importantly, the editor could explain how long it would take to get a product like this to market (~10-12 years) and thus not get people excited about this new tech, only to later be disappointed when they find out that it is a long way out.
1) RNA is VERY unstable and wouldn't last a few minutes in the environment, so it couldn't be delivered on a mass scale.
2) RNAi "knocks down" gene expression rather than "knocking it out." What this means is that RNAi doesn't affect your DNA, it just temporarily affects protein production. It's not as permanent as you imply.
3) RNAi only works in very controlled environments. It can't be simply used to "commit genocide" like you say on a mass scale.
I encourage you to go read about this Nobel-winning discovery before you start making assumptions about it.
Also, the ability to target, destroy, mutate, modify, or duplicate specific genes has existed for a very long time, and it's done on a daily basis in a variety of animal models in research facilities across the country, to develop treatments and therapies and understand disease.
But this- this is absolutely amazing.
Traditional chemotherapy attacks rapidly-reproducing cells, such as cancerous cells, but also attacks good cells. In most cases it's a race to see who kills the patient last - the cancer or the chemo. Unfortunately I know too much about this disease.
Here's one for my pediatric oncologist brother-in-law running out of work one day. I for once will be very happy to support him while he goes back to school to switch specialties. I'll even do it with a smile.
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