From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Jun 17 2003 - 07:28:35 MDT
On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, Brett Paatsch wrote:
> What would be neat would be if we could find some natty way of getting
> nanoparticles containing cytotoxins directed in on monoclonal quantum dot
> labelled tumor sites. It would give us a nice way of doing cell specific
> chemotherapy with less side effects.
Brett, I think one of the problems here is that one may not have good,
reliable markers for most tumors types. Without them it is difficult to
produce a reliable monoclonal. If you did have the markers radiolabeled
monoclonals would be further along than they seem to be. There are a few
of these that may be being worked on in the clinical setting but because
the number of things that can go wrong to produce cancer one has a real
problem of needing to know what exactly what sub-type of cancer it is
(that is why Gleevec tends to be so effective -- it is a very mutation
specific type of cancer). Some sub-types, perhaps many, are unlikely
to display a molecule on the cell surface that identifies itself as
that sub-type. That is why there is an emphasis on angiogenesis
inhibitors -- all sub-types are sooner or later going to need an
expanded blood supply to grow.
Robert
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