Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Nanomachines Stop Cancer From Spreading [Nanomachines]

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/329961762/nanomachines-stop-cancer-from-spreading

Fighting tumors with nanomachines isn't super new, but scientists just made a new discovery when using the nanoparticles loaded with doxorubicin in mice: the cancer didn't spread.

"Patients often don't die from primary tumors, which you can recognize and detect and develop a therapy for," said Cheresh. "They die from metastatic disease — when, for example, a breast cancer spreads to the liver, the lymph nodes, the brain. Those patients could theoretically be treated with this type of therapy, with the hope that it would prolong the progression of the disease, that the metastatic lesions would slow."

The nanomachines don't just help kill cancer and stop it from sprreading, they can even be used to detect cancer early as well. We'd like scientists to develop these nano bots to give us superpowers like super vision and super strength, but saving us from dying is a pretty super too. [Wired]