Imagine if cancer could become trivial

[whoa182]

Advances in medicine are likely to be made available to the public within the decade. Advances such as nanoscale sensors and drug delivery devices are being tested now, at several university and business labs.

One very good example is the work with nanoshells being done at Rice by Dr. Naomi Halas and Dr. Jennifer West.

The process:

during your regular checkup, your doctor injects you with nanoshells, then shines a "near-infrared" light over your body, briefly. Then a program on their laptop indicates location, shape and size of any new early-stage tumors. Once located, each tumor can then be hit with the same light, at higher energies, killing the tumor, and not damaging the surrounding tissues.

within the next decade cancer will become more of just a bit of a nuisance than something life threatening

Shame things like these are going to come too late for millions of people, but trials are starting next year, take a read of this

While drug companies cast about for a better pill to treat cancer, Naomi Halas has turned to nanotechnology. The Rice University engineer is the inventor of the “nanoshell,” a gold-coated globe of silica about 1/20 the size of a red blood cell that attaches itself to tumors.

Halas has shown, in petri dishes, that flashes of near-infrared light burn the shells and cancerous tissue without destroying healthy cells. Now, just under a year later, Halas says the nanoshells work just as effectively in rodents. Tumorous mice injected with nanoshells and then exposed to infrared light became cancer-free within 10 days, and stayed that way after treatment. Good news for rodents, but will it work in humans? We’ll find out next year (2005) when Halas begins clinical trials.


Could we see the end of most cancers within the next 5 years... I believe its entirely possible, 10 years max.

What you do you think? Any interesting technologies that look really promising that you know of..

[Tormod]

I love this kind of stuff. It sounds like far-out science fiction, but when I read that people are actually trying to get it to work I get excited. Cancer is of course one problem - imagine the day when they can just give you a pill and it will let lose a lot of small nanobots in your body and find out whatever is wrong with you (and fix it in the process). Kind of scary, though.

[dlauz]

There is also some studies being made with sea sponges to treat cancer. It is believe that they have some kind of chimicals to protect them from predator fish. these same chimicals are believe to fight cancer.

[Shoushou]

I've once read about cancer...It's of the diseases that r caused due to the damage of more than one gene..There r two groups of genes, the damage of any of these groups causes cancer..
The first group is called oncogens: these genes r the genes which have the susceptibility to form tumors if its function isn't controlled by the other group which is called tumor suppressor genes, this group is responsable for controlling the activity & function of the first group (oncogens)...So any damage happens in one or both groups is considered as a cause for cancer...

In the field of Genetics Engineering, scientists have discovered a gene called (p53)..this gene is responsible for most of cancer kinds which affect different organs of human body...If, for any reason, a damage happens in that gene,, there'll be a possibility of having cancer...So scientists can , by Genetics Enginring, inject another functioning (p53) gene, & replace the damaged one, so the possibility of having cancer is meant to be over...

I don't know whether any of these technologis has been applied or not...
Anyway, further explaination would be helpful..

[frostbitte]

Could we see the end of most cancers within the next 5 years... I believe its entirely possible, 10 years max.

I certainly hope so. It's amazing how far we've come in terms of medical science in the last 100 years.

I personally hate cancer though my family isn't terribly afflicted with it. I hate the fact our own bodies turn on us and destroy us.
I think within the next 10 years we'll see more and more successful treatments for different types of Cancer with nearly 100% success rate. Within 50 years you won't see it much at all. I figure by that time gene therapy will have advanced far enough to put an end to it.

[C1ay]

Welcome to the forum Shoushou and dlauz.

[MojcaS]

Cancer (as genetic progress of changing cells to immortal and as disease) is so versatile disease that even the same type can be very different in different patient. I myself am working in cancer genetics and molecular biology and more i know more i believe that cancer (this or that form) will outlive the humans.
I don't believe will ever find universal 'pill' which you will take and be cured of cancer but we all are making progress in early diagnostic, better treatment of patients and better life quality after cancer- there are many excellent drugs, kemotherapeutic and diagnostic techniques- but only available to very very wealthy individuals- medicine is expensive. That is the main problem!

[UncleAl]

There is an astounding inventory of old people crapping in diapers in nursing homes right now. Folks born before the Great Depression and WWII, before modern medicine, before nutrition... are living beyond age 78 on the average. There is every reason to believe Baby Boomers will have average lifespans of 100 years.

Imagine a nation of 300 million containing 100 million cases of senile dementia at a (very conservative) healthcare cost of $150/day each. The cost of extended lifespan will thus exceed $5.5 trillion/year. What does that leave the other 200 million who work for a living?

The future does not promise death will be conquered. Death will be delivered by jackbooted State imposition.

[whoa182]

Here is some recent developments that you might not be aware of.. They are quite amazing.

Development1

Nanocell's double hit on cancer

Nanocell that can burrow into a tumour, cut off its blood supply and detonate a lethal dose of anti-cancer toxins has been developed.
The double-action therapy, which comes packed in a tiny double chamber, leaves healthy cells unscathed.

It has proved safe and effective against melanoma and a form of lung cancer in mice.

Details of the technique, developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are published in Nature.

The technique combines two methods of combating cancer - poisoning tumour cells and cutting off the blood supply to the tumour.

Previously, the dual strategy has proved difficult as chemotherapy could not be delivered to tumours if the supply line - the blood vessels - had been cut.

Also, the drugs required are delivered on different schedules - blood vessel-destroying anti-angiogenics over a prolonged period, and chemotherapy in cycles.

Double balloon

The MIT team tackled the problem by creating a structure for the nanocell that resembled a balloon within a balloon.

The researchers loaded the outer membrane of the nanocell with an anti-angiogenic drug and the inner balloon with chemotherapy agents.

They also created a surface chemistry which allowed the nanocell to evade detection by the immune system.

The nanocell was made small enough to pass through tumour vessels, but too large for the pores of normal vessels.

Once inside the tumour, the nanocell's 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.

Tests in mice showed the nanocell shrank the tumour, stopped angiogenesis (new vessel growth) and avoided damage to surrounding healthy tissue much more effectively than other cancer treatments.

Eight out of 10 mice treated with the nanocells survived for more than 65 days.

Mice treated with the best current therapy survived for just 30 days, while untreated animals died at 20 days.

The nanocell worked better against melanoma than lung cancer - indicating the need to tweak the design for different cancers.

Elegant system

Lead researcher Professor Ram Sasisekharan said: "This model enables us to rationally and systematically evaluate drug combinations and loading mechanisms.

"It's not going to stop here. We want to build on this concept."

Dr Judah Folkman, of Children's Hospital Boston, said: "It's an elegant technique for attacking the two compartments of a tumor, its vascular system and the cancer cells."

Henry Scowcroft, of Cancer Research UK, said: "This is a fascinating approach to cancer therapy that seems to be paying off in animal models of the disease.

"The idea of using nanoparticles as a sort of therapeutic 'Trojan horse', attacking the cancer cell by stealth from within, is entirely new.

"Although this concept is only starting out on the long road to becoming a treatment for cancer patients, these preliminary results look very promising indeed."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4715739.stm

Development 2

Nanotechnology kills cancer cells
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4734507.stm

Nanotechnology has been harnessed to kill cancer cells without harming healthy tissue.

The technique works by inserting microscopic synthetic rods called carbon nanotubules into cancer cells.

When the rods are exposed to near-infra red light from a laser they heat up, killing the cell, while cells without rods are left unscathed.

Details of the Stanford University work are published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researcher Dr Hongjie Dai said: "One of the longstanding problems in medicine is how to cure cancer without harming normal body tissue.

"Standard chemotherapy destroys cancer cells and normal cells alike.

"That's why patients often lose their hair and suffer numerous other side effects.

"For us, the Holy Grail would be finding a way to selectively kill cancer cells and not damage healthy ones."

Many in cell

The carbon nanotubules used by the Stanford team are only half the width of a DNA molecule, and thousands can easily fit inside a typical cell.

Under normal circumstances near-infra red light passes through the body harmlessly.

But the Stanford team found that if they placed a solution of carbon nanotubules under a near-infra red laser beam, the solution heated up to about 70C in two minutes.

They then placed the tubules inside cells, and found they were quickly destroyed by the heat generated by the laser beam.

Dr Dai said: "It's actually quite simple and amazing. We're using an intrinsic property of nanotubes to develop a weapon that kills cancer."

The next step was to find a way to introduce the nantubules into cancer cells, but not healthy cells.

The researchers did this by taking advantage of the fact that, unlike normal cells, the surface of cancer cells is covered with receptors for a vitamin known as folate.

They coated the nanotubules with folate molecules, making it easy for them to pass into cancer cells, but unable to bind with their healthy cousins.

Exposure to the laser duly killed off the diseased cells, but left the healthy ones untouched.

Refined technique

The researchers believe it should be possible to refine the technique still further, for instance by attaching an antibody to a nanotubule to target a particular kind of cancer cell.

They have already started work on tailoring the technique to target lymphoma in mice.

Dr Emma Knight, of the charity Cancer Research UK, said: "Nanotechnology has a lot to offer biomedical science, and the results of this paper suggest yet another way in which it may help in the fight against cancer.

"However, this work is still at a very early stage. The researchers have shown that near-infra red light can cause nanotubes to produce heat that can kill cancer cells.

"But their work so far has focused on cells that have been grown in culture in the laboratory.

"Further research will be crucial to see whether these effects can be reproduced in the more complex environment of a tumour and, ultimately, the human body."

[dr.nawar]

well, theoritically, it seems applicable although in vivo processing could amaze us with unexpected responses ..
technology is a bifacial tool .. i guess we still remember that radiologic studies where found out to reveal pathologic lesion as neoplastic ones ..then it turned its homely face by inducing carcinogenesis itself!!
so hoping too much is one of the MDs pitfalls ..
this doesnt mean it shall not be followed up .. the up-side down turn of diseased humans' life worths every single trial ..whereas u may know that promotion of an already initiated carcinogensis is unpredictable , i.e. those nanotubules could be promoters themselves in certain cases ..
all in all , i still think it is respect worthy the human brain that comes up with such great ideas, weighing both advantages & disadvantages of newly introduced applications , predicting even bizzare responses ..

yup, a small p.s. for who commented "old people inventory" , cancer could be one of the leading causes of mortality, but its not the only one!! & saving lives shall be the representative goal of the medical profession never hesitated upon, fearing the burden of take-care of amnestic old people who could be our parents!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!