Bacteria coaxed to deliver chemo drugs right inside tumours
Canadian scientists say they have found a way to direct special bacteria to carry chemotherapy drugs straight into the most active part of a cancerous tumour. That could lead to more effective cancer treatments with lower doses of drugs and fewer side-effects.
Chemotherapy drugs are designed to be highly toxic in order to kill fast-growing cancer cells. But currently, their effectiveness is limited because very little of traditional drugs actually makes it into cancerous tumours — most of it ends up in the rest of the patient's body, causing nasty side-effects, says Sylvain Martel, a professor of computer engineering at Polytechnique Montreal.
Martel, who holds a Canada Research Chair in nanorobotics, has been working for 15 years on ways to direct drugs to a tumour.
The solution he originally envisioned was using tiny robots — nanorobots — that humans could direct using magnetic fields to swim through blood vessels and deliver drugs to a particular location.
Unfortunately, he said, "This is way beyond technology.… We cannot build this kind of nanorobot."
So instead, Martel turned to nature — could there be bacteria that could do the same job?
It turns out there are. Bacteria called magnetotactic cocci are equipped with a natural, built-in compass needle made of iron that helps them navigate as they swim through water using whip-like tails called flagella. That means they can be directed using a magnetic field.
Paper:
http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2016.137.html
PR:
http://www.polymtl.ca/carrefour-actualite/en/news/legions-nanorobots-target-cancerous-tumours-precision
Article:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bacteria-drug-delivery-tumour-martel-1.3723594?cmp=rss
#research #cancer #health #medicine #scitech #science
This is huge (again!)
ReplyDeleteCorina Marinescu, I just finished reading The Emperor of All Maladies: A History of Cancer goo.gl/ZAK6hi and was absolutely fascinated by the story arcs described. From early attempts at herbal remedies to the progression of surgical excision procedures from conservative to grotesquely aggressive, to the first anti-neoplastons used by Farber, the the first oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes; the development of radiation therapy; multiple drugs for extended periods.....it was equally fascinating, depressing, exciting....
ReplyDeleteI wish he would do an updated edition to follow recent advances like this, too.
I'm thinking of doing a book review of it on my dental blog www.SmilesbyPayet.com, but it will take a lot to write.
I'm gonna put it on my reading list, and I'll keep an eye on your page Smiles by Payet Family Dentistry .
ReplyDeleteMerci beaucoup.
Corina Marinescu uh-oh.....pressure's on! :-D
ReplyDeleteCorina Marinescu well, since you said you'd be looking for the review, and I really should write it before diving into Mukherjee's newest book The Gene: an Intimate History goo.gl/rbKtVW, I'm sitting down this morning to work on the article.
ReplyDeleteThe one weakness in the book, at least from my perspective as a dentist, is that Dr. Mukherjee doesn't even touch on oropharyngeal cancers. To make the review more relevant to anyone reading my dental blog, I'm going to add information on those. Naturally, that will end up touching on the HPV vaccine, too, so I'll have to include at least a brief section on debunking anti-vaxxers tropes, too.
Yeesh, this might end up being a book of its own!
Sounds great Smiles by Payet Family Dentistry
ReplyDeleteCorina Marinescu sometimes it takes me weeks to write an article, sometimes it's much faster. I think this one took 10 hours. I would love your thoughts on it: http://www.smilesbypayet.com/2016/08/oral-cancer-charlotte-dentist/
ReplyDelete