For what it's worth: cancer cure announced

[Adrian II]

MELBOURNE: Specially designed 'minicells' successfully target and kill cancer cells – the new technology has the "potential to deliver drugs that were considered undeliverable," scientists say.

In mice seeded with human tumours, then treated with this new technique, the recovery rate was 100%. In the next few months, EnGeneIc will recruit 20 long-term cancer patients for a phase one safety trial at three Melbourne hospitals.

The study, by Jennifer MacDiarmid and Himanshu Brahmbhatt of EnGeneIC, a privately held Australian bioscience company founded in 2001, is the cover story of the July issue of Nature Biotechnology.

Source (http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2834/killer-minicells-fight-drug-resistant-cancer)

Rejoice? Grain of salt? Booh?

Discuss.

[Adrian II]

Wow. If true, this could be the best thing to happen in our generation. And that's no understatement.Aye! But... where's the catch?

[Proletariat]

Catch? What possible catch? This is cause for a celebratory smoke.

:smoking:

[Adrian II]

Catch? What possible catch? This is cause for a celebratory smoke.

:smoking:Lol!

Hold your Camels though, there must be a catch somewhere. This is far too good to be true.

[Papewaio]

Economy Growing, Check. :smug:
Socceroos through to the World Cup, Check. :smug:
Another Australian Cancer Cure, Check. :smug:

The catch is we get to die of something else. :smoking:

[Adrian II]

Economy Growing, Check. :smug:
Socceroos through to the World Cup, Check. :smug:
Another Australian Cancer Cure, Check. :smug:

The catch is we get to die of something else. :smoking:I want to die in bed, and I don't mean in my sleep if I may be so blunt.

[Papewaio]

I saw heaven in her eyes as my body left the mortal coil.

Petite and large death in one.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Sounds promising. I hope this works in humans too, guess time will tell.


I want to die in bed, and I don't mean in my sleep if I may be so blunt.

Heck, be adventurous. Have her tie you up in a chair while you call her dirty names and....oops, already been done.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Shouldn't this be around the news a bit more if it is as big as it sounds?

[Hooahguy]

maybe theres hope for my friends brother after all...
:2thumbsup:

[Louis VI the Fat]

*Laughs at all the silly folk who've given up smoking*

:smoking:

[Samurai Waki]

So should I start packing up my supplies, and hide somewhere that is light all the time, to avoid the Zombie attacks, and be rescued by a handsome black man?

[Xiahou]

Sounds promising. I hope this works in humans too, guess time will tell.That's the catch of course. A treatment working on mice is far from a guarantee that it will work the same in humans.

It sounds promising- but let's see what happens in the human trials.

[Lord Winter]

If it's just entering trails it may still be 5-10 years before major use.


The journal it was published in seems fairly prestigous so it looks like the science behind it is well supported. Still puzzled by the lack of media around it.

[Lemur]

*Laughs at all the silly folk who've given up smoking*
Now I feel really, really stupid for quitting. Well, except for the fact that the taxes on ciggies have made them a deluxe luxury item anyway.

So I guess my budget can rejoice, even if my body didn't need the break. And it doesn't sound like they've got a cure for emphysema.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

If this works, I think I'm going to have to get in the black market for ciggies and sell to all you dependents. :D

[Papewaio]

Well maybe adult stem cells derived from fat can cure that one.

[Husar]

Hmm, at the end they say the big issue is safety, but personally I'd say why worry about that if I had terminal cancer anyway? :inquisitive:

[Sarmatian]

Oh my beautiful tobacco, have you missed me? I have missed you very very much...

If this turns out to be true, I'll start each day with a "Hail Australia and Australians".

[Sarmatian]

Even with cancer taken out of the equation, cigarettes would still be a serious risk to your health.

They don't do anything good for you, that's for sure. Tax away the idiots (myself included) who buy them. Better to tax cigarettes than something actually useful...

[woad&fangs]

Interesting. The "minicells" are just transports for treatments that have already been developed, but were too dangerous or unstable to deliver before. I think that the "catch" is going to be that the minicells will turn out to not be as stable as the researchers hope. However, the improved ability to transport that siRNA stuff will be a HUGE help in treating cancer patients.

So this is either awsome news or super extra awsome news. Either way, kudos to the Aussies:2thumbsup:

[Sarmatian]

I paid seven dollars for a pack of Kools today. :furious3:

Do you need a better incentive to quit smoking? :laugh4:

[FactionHeir]

They also only used small doses of the transporter bacterium.

Problems that I can envision with it:
- Bacterium mutates
- Comes into contact with wild S. typhimurium resulting in some funky combinations, none of which would be pleasant
- High toxicity in larger doses, which would be required for humans, either from drug overdose or transporter leak, resulting in drug floating free in the body
- Targeting may be a bit off - results in hitting other fast growing cells or cells with that particular receptor
- Patient with auto immune disease
- Questionable how to get the bacterium out again once you pump someone up with it
- Bacterium gets infected by one of many virii, altering its function

[LittleGrizzly]

I can smoke to that!

*quickly finishes rolling*

[Fragony]

Years and years and yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars of testing to avoid lawsuits, that would be the catch the risky aged won't benefit from it.

[LittleGrizzly]

I think anyone over 40 still needs to put the cigerette out but as someone in thier twenties I can still look forward to years of smoking ahead...

[KukriKhan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9Rumfb5kyU

"I smoke 'em. HE smokes 'em..."

If you ever saw TV ciggie ads (before they were banned), this is a hoot.

On-topic: God bless Australia and all her people. Carry on mates. :2thumbsup: Please. The maybe I can die of terminal happiness. :)

[Adrian II]

They also only used small doses of the transporter bacterium.

Problems that I can envision with it:
- Bacterium mutates
- Comes into contact with wild S. typhimurium resulting in some funky combinations, none of which would be pleasant
- High toxicity in larger doses, which would be required for humans, either from drug overdose or transporter leak, resulting in drug floating free in the body
- Targeting may be a bit off - results in hitting other fast growing cells or cells with that particular receptor
- Patient with auto immune disease
- Questionable how to get the bacterium out again once you pump someone up with it
- Bacterium gets infected by one of many virii, altering its functionOn the upside, the result is said to be 100% in mice which they seeded with humane carcinoma. One hundred percent, now that is promising as animal trials go. Of course they didn't mention the size of N in this trial or the results of other trials that may have been less than perfect. And for all we know it make take another 25 years to fine-tune the targeting of the drug.

And blah blah, who are we to know anyway? I just hope this isn't some stupid hoax to begin with.

[a completely inoffensive name]

On news aggregation sites like Digg and Reddit, there a cure for cancer story once a week. It's become some what of a running joke at this point. So forgive me if I am skeptical of this.

[Beskar]

There are already cure for cancers, such as cutting it out, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

[Furunculus]

*Laughs at all the silly folk who've given up smoking*

:smoking:

haha, agreed, now its just the other smoking related medical problems i have to worry about. :sweatdrop:

[Adrian II]

On news aggregation sites like Digg and Reddit, there a cure for cancer story once a week. It's become some what of a running joke at this point. So forgive me if I am skeptical of this.Cosmos is a science and education bi-monthly, unlike Digg, Reddit or Boingboing. And Nature Biotechnology certainly is not. And they article does feature on their site:


Sequential treatment of drug-resistant tumors with targeted minicells containing siRNA or a cytotoxic drug

Jennifer A MacDiarmid, Nancy B Amaro-Mugridge, Jocelyn Madrid-Weiss, Ilya Sedliarou, Stefanie Wetzel, Kartini Kochar, Vatsala N Brahmbhatt, Leo Phillips, Scott T Pattison, Carlotta Petti, Bruce Stillman, Robert M Graham & Himanshu Brahmbhatt

Published online: 28 June 2009 | doi:10.1038/nbt.1547

Drug resistance remains a major hurdle to effective cancer chemotherapy. MacDiarmid et al. show that bacterially derived minicells packaged with siRNAs reverse tumor drug resistance and that subsequent treatment with minicells loaded with cytotoxic drugs causes tumor stabilization or regression.

linky (http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/index.html)

[a completely inoffensive name]

Cosmos is a science and education bi-monthly, unlike Digg, Reddit or Boingboing. And Nature Biotechnology certainly is not. And they article does feature on their site:

Umm you do realize that Digg and Reddit just host other websites articles including Cosmos, they do not create their own articles. I don't really understand the rest through the spelling/grammatical errors since I am tried right now.

But nevertheless in response to Beskar those are treatments or therapies not cures. A cure ends the condition permanently in everyone. Chemo and radio don't save everyone and many times the cancer comes back from remission, hardly cures.

[Beskar]

No medicine has a 100% success rate and even though you had the flu, you can still catch it again. There is no magical "no sickness ever" solution.

[a completely inoffensive name]

No medicine has a 100% success rate and even though you had the flu, you can still catch it again. There is no magical "no sickness ever" solution.

Well, I was not around when widespread antibiotics first came out, but I thought that before the bacteria began adopting to them they pretty much wiped out diseases that are now recently coming back, drug resistant. Also, I don't recall anyone talking about a cure for a virus, just cancer cells. I also want to clarify I am not saying a cure is something that will work forever.

EDIT: Also technically, the recurrence of the flu your are bringing up is due to the fact that they are two different flu's, most likely last years, but changed just enough to be too different for your immune system to recognize it as last years.

[Husar]

There are already cure for cancers, such as cutting it out, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Uhm, this is basically a form of delivery for the chemotherapy and may make the cutting out redundant even. Plus if it is as successful as described then you'd be a potential darwin award winner for preferring the methods you mentioned over this new one.

Chemotherapy delivers really nasty chemicals to your whole body, which is why many people lose their hair etc. it can harm your body about as much as the cancer and may just simply not work because the chemicals are delivered to all cells usually, this therapy would deliver the medicine almost exclusively to the cancer cells and even allows for additional measures and medicines which were impoosble to use before, your response really puzzles me, I could just as well say there is a cure other than cutting it out and chemotherapy, it's called a bullet to your head... :dizzy2:

[Beskar]

It would be an improvement in treatment, not necessarily the cure. I was just saying that.

[rory_20_uk]

No medicine has a 100% success rate and even though you had the flu, you can still catch it again. There is no magical "no sickness ever" solution.

Influenza isn't one virus, it is potentially hundreds. Add in all the others that cause coughs / colds and you're in thousands. Add mutations to all of these...


There are already cure for cancers, such as cutting it out, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Cutting it out works on early, non-invasive cancers.
Radiotherapy occasionally is curative, but often is palliative.
Chemo sometimes works completely, but often helps reduce the size. As has been said, it is basically poison, and chemotherapy agents are themselves carcinogenic.
There are also hormone modulators that can be used for certain types of cancer.

What I imagine happening is that cancers will redefined as those that respond to this treatment, and those that don't in the same way that they have with previous technologies. It might even be that the Dr says "you've got cancer. Book a routine injection with the nurse next week and you'll be fine" for the majority.

~:smoking:

[Reenk Roink]

About time

[TevashSzat]

This treatment has just passed animal testing phase and, presumably, Phase 0 of clinical trials.

Still a long way to go before it gets FDA approval. I think the average for cancer treatment is like 8 years from entering clinical trials to actually getting approved. Thats assuming, of course, that something doesn't go horrendously wrong

[Aemilius Paulus]

I have read about the same thing two years ago in National Geographic.