Over the past several years, a number of advancements have been made in the world of cancer research, including an artificial beauty spot that could warn you of cancer before symptoms emerge that can be used for early cancer detection and a light-emitting implant that can be used to “zap” tumors.
Now new research suggests that tiny bubbles that already exist in the human body might potentially be used to treat cancer — and could work better than chemotherapy.
Masamitsu Kanada, an assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University’s Institute for Qualitative Health Science and Engineering has improved a therapeutic approach to delivering genes that can convert certain drugs into toxic agents that can be used to target cancerous tumors.
Essentially, healthy cells in our bodies are always producing “tiny bubbles” called extracellular vesicles (EVs) that transfer generic material like your DNA to other cells. Kanada thinks the nano-sized particles could also be used to transport therapeutic drugs and genes that target cancer cells. His work was recently published in the American Association for Cancer Research.
The research was done through Michigan State University along with Stanford University.
The drugs start out as inactive compounds when they’re put in the body, but when they metabolize in the body, they’re activated and can immediately start fighting diseases like cancer — or even just ease the pain of a headache.
The difference between the drug and those currently on the market is simply how the drugs are transported to your body. In the case of cancer, the “tiny bubble” method was proven to be 14 times more effective at drug delivery in mice, and it was also more successful at actually killing cancerous tumors.
“Conventional chemotherapy isn’t able to differentiate between tumors and normal tissue, so it attacks it all,” Kanada said in a statement. “This non-specificity can cause severe side effects and insufficient drug concentration in tumors.”
Ultimately the method could help minimize the risk of unwanted immune responses that come with other gene therapies.
A clinical trial of the method, which is separate from Kanada’s work, is expected to begin in the United States soon.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.
Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.
Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).
AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.
The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.