Scripture of the Day:
Matthew 4:23
And Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in their
synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and healing all manner of
sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
I heard about this article on the TV news and wanted to look it up and read it. I think it is particularly interesting. I would have loved for my oncologist to track my chemo. I would have loved for my oncologist to see where it was going. I would have loved for her to say, "You don't have to do this any more. It's done the job!". It amy not have happened to me, but maybe it'll help someone that has joined my on my journey and chemotherapy is yet to come. The article had several links in it that I would share here. But the following is the link to the article so that you may go there and read more for yourselves.
New particle can track chemo
Discovery could reveal how well – and how fast
– treatment finds and kills cancer
By: Misti Crane
Published on January 14, 2016
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Tracking the path of chemotherapy
drugs in real time and at a cellular level could revolutionize cancer care and
help doctors sort out why two patients might respond differently to the same
treatment.
Researchers at The Ohio State University have found a way
to light up a common cancer drug so they can see where the chemo goes and how
long it takes to get there.
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Mingjun Zhang
|
They’ve devised an organic technique for creating this
scientific guiding star and in doing so have opened up a new frontier in their
field. Previous efforts have been limited by dyes that faded quickly and by
toxic elements, particularly metals.
A study published this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology highlighted
two novel accomplishments. First, the researchers created a luminescent
molecule, called a peptide and made up of two amino acids. Then they hitched
that light to the cancer medication so that it revealed the chemo’s arrival
within cells.
“This is very important for personalized medicine. We
really want to see what’s going on when we give chemo drugs and this work paves
the way for the exciting endeavor,” said Mingjun Zhang, thebiomedical engineering professor who led
the study.
Biomedical engineers strive to find techniques that
behave naturally within the body and leave without doing harm. This research
holds promise for doing just that because the peptide is one that should easily
coexist with human cells and leave as harmlessly as it entered.
“You can combine your drug with this luminescent
vehicle,” Zhang said of the tiny fluorescent particle devised in his lab.
“Composed of natural amino acids, the nanoparticle is inherently biocompatible.
Our biological machines can easily take care of it.”
This work was done in petri dishes in Zhang’s lab and
work in animals is currently underway.
In the body or tissue of an animal or person,
scientists would watch the fluorescent signal with an optical detection system,
said Zhang, who is a member of Ohio State’s Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute.
Zhang and his colleagues sandwiched their peptide to a
common chemotherapy drug so that its light was hidden until the two elements
peeled apart upon entering the cells.
Zhang was particularly delighted to see that the blue
peptide, which can be seen under ultraviolet light, maintained its luminescence
for extended periods of time. Previous work to track drugs using organic dyes
has been hampered by their tendency to fade with time.
“You can label it and you can attach it to a drug and
see where the drug goes and when it is released,” Zhang said.
And it could be that the biomedical advance can give
patients and their doctors information on how well and how quickly a medication
is working for them.
“Maybe for some people a drug is taking effect in a few
minutes and for somebody else it’s hours and for somebody else it never takes
effect,” Zhang said.
The research team used doxorubicin, a widely used
chemotherapy drug, for their lab work, but the discovery could apply to
different types of treatments.
Better understanding of the complex interplay of cells
and drugs is critical to development of treatments that are finely tuned for
individual patients.
The Ohio State work builds on research that earned a
trio of scientists the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Their work
on green fluorescent protein found in jelly fish led to the discovery that
scientists could illuminate cellular-level activity that had previously been
cloaked in mystery.
Zhang’s work was supported by the National Science
Foundation.
His collaborators included graduate students Zhen Fan,
Leming Sun and Yujian Huang and lab manager Yongzhong Wang.
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