[extropy-chat] Cool: Cancer Killing Nano

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Sat, 21 Feb 2004, Harvey Newstrom wrote:

> Russell Evermore wrote,
> >
> > <http://nanotechwire.com/news.asp?nid=725>
>
> I can't tell from this article whether this actually exists or is just
> predicted for the future.  Any specific details?  This would be amazing if
> we could use this technology. [snip]

This isn't new, its a form of nanohype.  Targeted antibodies with
radioactive molecules or genotoxins attached have been around for
some time.  The problem is that since cancerous cells rarely mutate
in the same way it is difficult to get antibodies with the required
specificity.  It is a perfectly reasonable therapy when you get
antibodies that are specific to the cancer -- determining the
cancer subtype is much more feasible now using microarrays that
look at gene expression -- *but* since there are probably thousands
of different subtypes of cancers and since each individual displays
molecular fragments (of mutated genes) based on their own specific
MHC genes (which is what the antibodies generally target) -- getting antibody
based therapies to work well is likely to be very problematic.

Robert