Cancer Therapy with Radioactive Scorpion Venom

BostonBTS writes "Researchers from TransMolecular, Inc. have used chlorotoxin -- a component of giant yellow scorpion venom -- to target radioactive treatments for the deadly brain cancer glioma. From the article: 'In the study, 18 patients first had surgery to remove malignant gliomas, a lethal kind of brain tumor. Then doctors injected their brains with a solution of radioactive iodine and TM-601, the synthetic protein. The solution bound almost exclusively to leftover tumor cells, suggesting that it could be combined with chemotherapy to fight cancer. Furthermore, two study patients were still alive nearly three years after the treatment.' Their paper is slated for publication in the August issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology."

Re:You're the resident expert...

[Black-Six]

You make an excellent point about tuning microwaves to the frequency of the venom to cook cancer cells, but there are just to many variables here for it to even be considered, not now anyway. First of all, the way a microwave oven works is to induce heat by adding electrons to fatty cells, that's why meat gets warmer faster than bread. Doctors wouldn't go for this due to the fact they could scramble brains even with only a few seconds exposure. Second of all, microwaves experience the same problems as laser beams do in atmosphere's. Nitrogen is a great scatterer of IR and EM waves thus the Northern Lights due to solar wind, also one has to take into account the varying layers of material to be penetrated and not to be fried by microwaves to reach the venom tagged cells. A design team would have to use the very lattest in computer processing power, both hardware and software, to produce a system that could calculate, tune, and react within naon seconds of a very long series of commands, 100-200 million calcs/nanosec, to even begin to be capable of developing a safe and controllable enviroment in which to treat people. Lastly, life evolves. To quote Dr. Malcom from Jurassic Park "Life will find a way.". Every few years, or even every few months, the systen would requier massive updates and overhauls to adapt to the new biological structures being used in it. These last 2 items aren't cost effective and as has been shown with the ABL, are very frustrating and time consuming. Your idea isn't flawed, its briliant. However, our current understanding of Quantum Mechanics is such that laser's and microwaves are about as far as we can develope hardware successfully. To activate the venom and not scramble the patient, you would need something akin to a remote for a TV to activate the venom. A single burst of commands to the venom instead of seconds of agitant microwaves would be far safer and much easier to use than tuning a microwave to each individuals own "frequency" so as to not kill your patient. This could lead to the Star Trek breed of nanoprobes used by the Borg, but to save life instead of take it.

The use of chemo still is that its the most effective way to treat cancer. However with treatments like this on the horizon, we could see a revoultion in the field of medicare within a few decades and definitly my lifetime. The world needs creative minds to continue to florish, so keep at it!

Re:More treatments

[Unc-70]

The trouble with this concept is that its a difficult process. The structures of chemicals from natural sources may be extremely complex, more so than is possible to produce on a large scale. The following links are from a blog by a professional medicinal chemist, who has a lot of experience in the area and offer a good deal of insight into the process of deriving a drug from natural sources.
1 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/04/26/ju ngle_rot.php [corante.com]
2 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/04/30/al l_natural.php [corante.com]
3 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/05/08/a_ natural_wonder_drug_now_what.php [corante.com]

Re:Hard to see how they would target cancer cells

[Punko]

The important thing is to find a protein that latches on the the cancer cells and not normal cells. There are many proteins out there for the different kinds of cancer. For this brain cancer, it appears that they have found such a protein. They will probably 'tag' the protein with radioactive (beta or beta/gamma emitters, not alphas like uranium) iodine (I-131 or I-128) or yittrium (Y-90) or phosphorous (P-32) (depending on the chemistry and the dose required). They will not use heavy metals like Uranium as the half-life is too long. The radioactive package will be released wherever the protein is. If the protein sticks to the cancer cell, then the cancer cell gets most of the dosage. The brain is fairly radiation-safe, as radiation kills cells that are actively reproducing (like cancer cells). Brain cells haven't been reproduced since entering adulthood. Radiation taggin therapy is not new. The fact that they have found a protein to bind to this kind of cancer cell is very new.