For what it's worth: cancer cure announced

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

Rejoice? Grain of salt? Booh?

Discuss.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

Wow. If true, this could be the best thing to happen in our generation. And that's no understatement.

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Aye! But... where's the catch?

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

:smoking:

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Originally Posted by Proletariat

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

:smoking:

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Lol!

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

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:

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Originally Posted by 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:

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

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

Petite and large death in one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

:smoking:

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?

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Originally Posted by Hosakawa Tito

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

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

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

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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.

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

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

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:

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".

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...

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:

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

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

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

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

I can smoke to that!

*quickly finishes rolling*

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

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...

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. :)

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Originally Posted by 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

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On 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.

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.

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