A Step Closer in the Fight Against Cancer

                Over the past couple of lectures we have discussed some of the negative by-products of technology. These included: health concerns, lowering of social skills, and an overall detachment to the world around us. I supported many of these arguments, but this week I decided to focus on one of the vast benefits of technology, specifically in the biomedical area. Recently, scientists have constructed a vaccine that might be able to fight cancer.

                While, this technology isn’t completely new, it is a great improvement of the last process. Cancer evades the immune system and drugs by being very similar to healthy cells, making it hard for both to hunt down and kill cancer cells. There are minor differences between the cancer and healthy cells, which was used previously in dendritic cell therapy. This therapy removed white blood cells and trained them how to hunt down the specific identifier of each patient’s cancer cells. Then these “re-educated” cells were then reinserted back into the body. Nevertheless, this solution was very costly and had a small lifespan; so it wasn’t too effective in the long run.

                This method was then improved by surgically placing a dime-sized scaffold under the skin. This scaffold was loaded with the necessary antigens and other chemicals required to constantly reprogram the dendritic cells to attack the cancer cells and postpone tumor growth. This technique solved the problem of having the cells reprogrammed for only a limited time. When tested on mice, 90% survived past the usual death time (30 days).

                Now, David Mooney has upgraded his scaffolding on a nanoscale level. Instead of having to surgically inert the scaffold under the skin, Mooney has made it possible to inject the “vaccine” directly into the body. Once inside the organism, the scaffolding spontaneously constructs itself from porous silica rods dispersed in liquid. The rods construct a sort of a 3D haystack with room to house and reprogram the immune cells. These rods are loaded with the specific antigens and other drugs, which cells will absorb through the porous rods before returning to the body and fighting the cancer cells. This vaccine is still in the stages of testing. In an animal test with mice, 90% of mice survived past the 30 day mark. In addition, another test was run inducing the same chemicals without the self-building scaffold and in that test only 60% of mice survived. The extreme increase in survival rate shows the benefits of using technology.

                This vaccine will surely be tested for many more years, before it is admitted to humans. Nevertheless, this new biomedical advancement has many positive impacts. This technology will allow us to make a great dent in the war against cancer, while also lowering the amount of poisonous procedures people go through to stop cancer form developing (Chemo and radiation). Moreover, when inserted with different chemicals this vaccine will also be able to fight other infectious diseases that are currently hard to fight. In addition, this process is much easier to administer and will be more cost-efficient allowing more clinics to provide it and more patients to receive it.  Overall, the use of nanotechnology and biomaterials to solve medical problems can lead to many more scientific breakthroughs that will help improve quality of life.