There's often a big difference
between how a drug or method of delivery works in a lab and how successful it
is in human trials. So, it's big news for researchers from the California
Institute of Technology (CalTech) that they were able, for the first time, to
successfully kill cancer cells in human patients using a new RNA
interference (RNAi) therapy delivered via a special nanobot.
This nanobot targets the messenger RNA (mRNA) to stop the
production of protein in the cancer cell, thus starving the cancer from its
source of survival.
Interfering RNAs are a new type of therapy that attack cancers and
other diseases at the genetic level; its discovery in 1998 won Andrew
Fine and Craig Mello the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. But the
Caltech researchers were the first to create the right nanobot to deliver the
siRNAs and they were able to inject the drug-filled nanobots directly into the
patients' bloodstreams.
This electron micrograph shows
the presence of numerous siRNA-containing targeted nanoparticles both entering
and within a tumor cell.: Credit: Caltech/Swaroop Mishra
"There are many cancer
targets that can be efficiently blocked in the laboratory using siRNA, but
blocking them in the clinic has been elusive," says Antoni Ribas,
associate professor of medicine and surgery at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive
Cancer Center. "This is because many of these targets are not amenable to
be blocked by traditionally designed anti-cancer drugs. This research provides
the first evidence that what works in the lab could help patients in the future
by the specific delivery of siRNA using targeted nanoparticles. We can start
thinking about targeting the untargetable.”
- SOURCE:
http://inventorspot.com/articles/nanobots_deliver_rna_interference_therapy_patients_cancer_cells_39132#sthash.AHKITutr.dpuf
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