9 replies to this topic

[theone]

Here we go again. We have the Cancer free mice, however no human trials. Now we have a Trojan Horse therapy and Human trials should hopefully should start next week.


"Sydney scientists Dr Jennifer MacDiarmid and Dr Himanshu Brahmbhatt, who formed EnGenelC Pty Ltd in 2001, said they had achieved 100 percent survival in mice with human cancer cells by using the "trojan horse" therapy in the past two years."


http://www.reuters.c...E55R1Q320090629

[Luna]

One giant leap for mice immortality! :D
Everybody wants to be a mouse because just a mmouse, gets all the cures. ^^

[theone]

They only problems is that millions of their kind had to die for such progress. It's to bad it does not translate so well into humans. However I do believe the end is coming soon to this scourge.

[bio123]

Yes this is great news for mice
I remember seeing the doco on this two years ago: http://www.abc.net.a...ail/default.htm
and wondering if we'd hear anymore about their treatment (you don't usually, sadly.) From the August 2007 transcript:
"The EDV has been successfully tested on animals, and human trials are expected to begin later this year." I'd be
interested to know what caused that delay, but it seems things have been moving along, so we can only hope I guess:)

[DeadMeat]

One giant leap for mice immortality! :D
Everybody wants to be a mouse because just a mmouse, gets all the cures. ^^

Being a dog isn't bad either.

See this article about an other trojan horse called nitrosylcobalamin(nitric oxide attached to vitamin B12), that is very successfully tested on pet dogs. I really hope this kind of animal friendly tests on pets becomes a trend and saves the lives of a lot of micies and ratties by the way.
http://www.medicinen...rticlekey=98701

The pubmed abstract of the tests of nitrosylcobalamin on pet dogs.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19557306

[niner]

If all these guys did was kill human cells in mice, then I'm not that impressed. Kill cancerous mouse cells while sparing healthy mouse cells, and then you have something. All the "magic bullet" treatments suffer from the same problem; recognizing a cancer cell and distinguishing it from a normal cell is very hard. If it was easy, your immune system would probably have taken care of it before you even knew you had it.

[DeadMeat]

If all these guys did was kill human cells in mice, then I'm not that impressed. Kill cancerous mouse cells while sparing healthy mouse cells, and then you have something. All the "magic bullet" treatments suffer from the same problem; recognizing a cancer cell and distinguishing it from a normal cell is very hard. If it was easy, your immune system would probably have taken care of it before you even knew you had it.

I'm not really sure what you mean by it not distinguising it from a normal cells? Since well, "trojan horses" are designed to deliver the chemotherapy drug or non toxic anti tumor compound specifically(or at least much more specifically that normal) to the tumor cells. That's the whole difference with normal chemotherapy.

Also note that both nitrosylcobalamin and EDV are targeted at receptors that are over expressed in the tumors. And as far as I know our immune system has no antibodies against undamaged normal receptors. Otherwise things would get messy. Since these receptors are not exclusively used by tumors and even small amounts of a antigen can induce a immune response.

For nitrosylcobalamin see these abstracts and the links in my previous post.
http://www.ncbi.nlm..../pubmed/9625434
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18540842

The uptake of vitamin B12 (cyanocobalamin, Cbl/VB12) in mammalian cells is mediated by specific, high-affinity receptors for the vitamin B12-binding protein, transcobalamin II, which is expressed on the plasma membrane. The receptor for vitamin B12 is overexpressed on a number of human tumors, including cancers of the ovary, kidney, uterus, testis, brain, colon, lung, and myelocytic blood cells. Furthermore, the affinity of cyanocobalamin conjugates for cell surface transcobalamin II receptors seems to be high enough so that vitamin B12 derivatization with the cytotoxic agent or carriers bearing cytotoxic drugs allows the selective delivery of diagnostic and therapeutic agents to cancer cells.

EDV.
http://www.abc.net.a...ture_review.pdf

Cancer-cell targeting was achieved by coupling minicells to bispecific antibodies, in which one arm recognizes surface lipopolysaccharide (LPS), and the other a surface receptor on the targeted cell, such as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), HER2/neu (also known as ERBB2), CD33 or CD3. Interestingly, compared to 'armed antibodies', which can be conjugated to 4–10 drug molecules, minicells can be packaged with 1–10 million drug molecules. The adhesion of the minicells to cancer cells was shown to trigger receptor-mediated endocytosis, with liberation of the drug into the cytosol and nucleus of the targeted cell.

And just like nitrosylcobalamin they also tested EDV on dogs with spontaneous dog tumors by the way. http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/17482133

Systemic administration of chemotherapeutic agents results in indiscriminate drug distribution and severe toxicity. Here we report a technology potentially overcoming these shortcomings through encapsulation and cancer cell-specific targeting of chemotherapeutics in bacterially derived 400 nm minicells. We discovered that minicells can be packaged with therapeutically significant concentrations of chemotherapeutics of differing charge, hydrophobicity, and solubility. Targeting of minicells via bispecific antibodies to receptors on cancer cell membranes results in endocytosis, intracellular degradation, and drug release. This affects highly significant tumor growth inhibition and regression in mouse xenografts and case studies of lymphoma in dogs despite administration of minute amounts of drug and antibody; a factor critical for limiting systemic toxicity that should allow the use of complex regimens of combination chemotherapy.

[ihatesnow]

http://www.medicalne...cles/155283.php

[ppp]

And does anyone know where you can buy nitrosylcobalamin?

[ppp]

And does anyone know where you can buy nitrosylcobalamin?

And it looks like the answer is that you can't buy it anywhere. The papers I've looked at all describe how they synthesised it rather than bought it from suppliers liked Sigma Aldritch etc.