http://www.geekosystem.com/17-yo-cancer-nanoparticle/ Angela Zhang, a 17-year-old, won $100,000 for inventing a nanoparticle that kills cancer cells. This is just amazing! I'm just 17, and I could never do anything like this. Hopefully, this will end up being the real cure for cancer. I just hope there's no catch, like turning people into zombies or something... Edit: Link added
Wait.. so someone invented a (possible) cure for cancer, and only got $100,000 for it? I don't think that's even .00000000001% of all the money being given to cancer research. Just sayin'
I've seen to many "Possible cure for cancer!" news stories to get my hopes up too high, but I sure hope this one comes through.
OK, time to throw some reality on this: Siemens Foundation - 2011 Winners To explain things a little further, it's not the nanoparticle that kills the cancer cells, but the drug to which said particle is coupled (salinomycin). Salinomycin has been around since at least 2009 and has been shown to be very effective against breast cancer stem cells, but also has a problem with toxicity, which means it harms normal cells. The nanoparticle is just a method for increasing the efficacy of targeting the drug to the cancerous cells. The idea of using a system to specifically target drugs to cancer cells is nothing new and is something the field has been investigating for quite awhile now. Nanoparticles have been looked at, as well as conjugating drugs to cancer-specific antibodies. Now, this isn't to say that this idea isn't impressive for a girl coming out of high school, but there's a long way to go. From the sounds of it, all she's done is design these potential nanoparticles. She'll need to actually get some made to determine whether they can actually be produced, as sometimes things that look great on paper don't always work well in real life. She'll need to make sure the nanoparticles themselves aren't toxic to normal cells. She'll need to see whether the nanoparticles increase uptake of salinomycin by cancer cells compared to controls of drug alone without nanoparticles. She'll need to see whether the nanoparticles increase the specificity of targeting salinomycin to cancer stem cells instead of normal stem cells. And that's just a few examples of the beginning of a very long road. But it sounds like she's got a promising career ahead of her, if she keeps at it. If they gave more than $100,000 to everyone who came up with a "possible" cure for cancer, most of which later turn out to go absolutely nowhere, the world's entire supply of money would be rapidly exhausted. If this turns out to be something truly revolutionary, and there's a long way to go on that, there'll be a lot more money coming her way.
"Cures" to cancer are a dime for a dozen. Give me a cure to being too goddamn tired to function at work and I'll listen. Caffeine and Ginseng don't help, they just make me more aware of my misery.
as a cancer patient forgive me if I don't get my hopes up. I would pay someone more than $100,000 to save my life let alone millions of lives.
Yeah, this is an idea that's been kicking around for a good while, in a bunch of different forms (functionalized carbon nanotubes, IR reactive selective nanoparticle attachment, etc. etc.) as a way of targeting drug delivery / treatment methods. It isn't so much a cure as it is a way of improving the effectiveness of modern drugs and treatment methods while decreasing the side-effects. But even if her design doesn't pan out at all when moved into the real world, it's still extremely impressive for someone at her age to do this much in an extremely complex and highly competitive field.
They did say possible. If it works without I am Legend happening. She'll have all the money in the world.
