Scottish scientists develop new technique for killing cancer cells | Hacker News Reader

Scottish scientists develop new technique for killing cancer cells

heraldscotland.com

33 pointspg6 comments

See

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1295315

submitted just today.

I find it interesting, pg, that you latch on to certain news stories that are based largely on researcher press releases to announce medical research results. Do the stories that catch your eye seem to have more start-up potential than other medical news stories, or do you use some other screens to decide which medical news stories are of most interest?

My own posting behavior reveals that I like medical news stories too, but I especially like those that are more cautious in drawing conclusions about clinical importance, and that bring up issues of research interpretation,

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

as it is well known that many initial research findings in human medicine are never replicated.

IANAD but I always thought that cancer cells were relatively weak and therefore actually killing them was not a big deal - all kinds of things can kill cancer - the problem is effectively delivering the killing mechanism to the site of the cancer without harming surrounding tissue.

That's what apparently makes this quite nice - uses the same mechanism as that which carries iron in the bloodstream so it seems low overhead (vs chemo) and high selectivity.

The intravenous administration of transferrin-bearing polypropylenimine polyplex resulted in gene expression mainly in the tumors. Consequently, the intravenous administration of the delivery system complexed to a therapeutic DNA led to a rapid and sustained tumor regression over one month, with long- term survival of 100% of the animals (90% complete response, 10% partial response).The treatment was well tolerated by the animals, with no apparent signs of toxicity.

Intravenous administration is very promising, as it suggests the possibility of targeting cancer anywhere in the body. The transferrin receptor is apparently common to many human cancers.

More info here: http://spider.science.strath.ac.uk/sipbs/staff/Christine_Duf...

Paper itself here (the Journal is paywalled, boo): http://www.scribd.com/doc/30300545/sdarticle

It has only been shown for skin cancer so far, but a) that's still a big deal as skin cancer is very common and b) indications are that this vector should probably work with other types.

...with a headbutt!!

You're getting downvoted, but I chuckled :)

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