Tag Archives: magic bullet

Quo Vadis (where are you going) Nanomedicine (journal) special issues

There are two issues, part one and part two, of the journal Nanomedicine asking the question: Where are you going? or Quo Vadis, if prefer the Latin. A Nov. 21, 2015 news item on Nanotechnology Now announces the special issues,

Nanomedicine, a leading MEDLINE-indexed journal, has published a special focus issue highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of this emerging field, which explores the medical application of nanotechnology to monitor, repair, and control human biological systems at the molecular level. Nanomedicine is published by Future Science Group.

A Nov. 20, 2015 Future Science Group press release on EurekAlert provides more detail,

“This special issue brings the different actors of nanomedicine closer together and encourages scientists to better understand the work of others who perform outside their own comfort zone,” said Michael Schillmeier, who co-guest-edited the two-volume issue with Robert Luxenhofer and Matthias Barz. “With a rather unique assemblage of input and opinion from scientists, philosophers, clinicians and social scientists, it is the beginning of an experiment in itself to rethink nanomedicine in the making.”

Contributing authors to the issue address the historical trajectory of the field, current debates, and future perspectives on nanomedical research. The articles position nanomedicine as not just a biological, chemical, and physical issue, but also a social issue. Of particular note, the articles bring together natural scientists, social scientists, clinicians and philosophers to both critically discuss and also engage with the creation of novel practices, concepts, methods, models and metaphors in nanomedicine. The authors also address the medical and regulatory needs of current nanomedical research and its possible future.

“Over the last decade, nanomedicine has become a field of innovative research and is now seen as having the potential to overcome many of the shortcomings of current disease treatment strategies. However, these exciting scientific advances have been accompanied by a number of issues which touch on the social, ethical and safety aspects of nanomedicine,” said Jonathan Wilkinson, Commissioning Editor of Nanomedicine. “This special issue seeks to address this, bringing together carefully selected experts from around the world who discuss the past, present and future of nanomedicine from a range of perspectives. We hope that the readers of the journal find the topics and viewpoints presented in the articles as interesting and thought-provoking as we have.”

The issues can be found here,

Special Focus Issue Part 1: Quo vadis nanomedicine: past, present and future of nanomedicine

Special Focus Issue Part 2: Quo vadis nanomedicine: past, present and future of nanomedicine

They feature a mix of papers that are open access or behind a paywall.

Here’s the introduction to the two issues (Note: Links have been removed),

As witnessed over the decade, ‘nanomedicine’ assembles diverse research agendas and practices, which aim to improve medical technologies, applications and practices. Clearly though, many promising concepts in the field of nanomedicine have a much longer tradition and link different fields of the life sciences and beyond. For instance Paul Ehrlich’s idea of the ‘magic bullet’ goes back to 1906 and still plays a role in conceptualizing and designing nanomedicine at the beginning of the 21st century. Irrespectively, if the ‘magic bullet’ will become a medical reality in the future or not, nanomedical research shows that novel ideas not only face a myriad of unsolved problems and unknowns, but also create scientific challenges and alter scientific practices. Moreover, since nanomedical research aims to innovating healthcare systems it requires a close participatory network of science, technology and society to address and engage with the issues posed by nanoscaled biomedical research.

The key argument of this two-volume special issue is that nanomedicine is as much a social issue as it is a biological, chemical, physical and so forth. With such a framework, this special issue contributes to a new era in the life sciences. The two-volume special issue addresses significant trajectories of the history, current debates and future perspectives of nanomedical research. It brings together natural scientists, social scientists, clinicians and philosophers to critically discuss but also engage with the creation of novel practices, concepts, methods, models and metaphors in nanomedicine. Authors also address the medical and regulatory needs in current nanomedical research and its possible futures.

Sociologist, philosopher and STS-scholar Michael Schillmeier argues that it is time to make nanomedicine public and protect nanomedicine from an excessive and often counter-productive ‘culture of promise’ of nanoscience and nanotechnology. He suggests to link three experimental ways of engaging with issues in life science and nanomedicine to improve current scientific practices: laboratory experiment and scientific analysis, public expert controversies, and publics [1].

Weitze and Heckl take on the issue of how science is communicated to the public. One particular problem may be that scientific results are being presented to the public, but the process of getting there often remains a black box for the interested public and even scientists from other fields [2]. Such practice disregards the importance of how facts are constructed. By contrast, in the ‘Open Nano Lab’ at the ‘Deutsche Museum’ in Munich, a research lab is out in the open and under scrutiny of the public.

Matthias Barz points out that simplifications in the complex task of developing nanomedicines are necessary to enable multidisciplinary research [3]. Scientists, however, need to be aware that current research strategies are prone to oversimplification or overgeneralization leading to unfavorable decisions in the developmental process itself.

Sociologist and STS-scholar Ghazal PourGashtasbi focuses on the processes of translation in nanomedical research practices and toxicology [4]. PourGashtasbi contributes to a context- and object-centered research agenda in Science and Technology Studies (STS). In particular, she addresses how nano-specific issues in medical research are exacerbated by uncertainty and unpredictability.

Robert Luxenhofer discusses variability and reproducibility in the process of synthesizing and characterizing polymers and nanomedicines [5]. Surprisingly, the issue of reproducibility, which is an undisputed necessity in life sciences, seems to be underappreciated in the first stages of nanomedicine development.

Philosopher and STS-scholar Xavier Guchet discusses the polysemic character of personalized medicine and nanomedicine [6]. He outlines rival epistemic and technological choices in research programs and argues that techno-epistemic plurality echoes conflicting expectations and values among today’s biomedicine actors.

Lamprecht tackles current issues of in vitro and in vivo characterization of nanomedicines [7]. Their works provide a critical overview on characterization methods available for nanomedicines and point out their specific limitations. By contrast, Baldelli-Bombelli and co-authors elaborate the influence of the protein corona on nanomedicines [8]. They outline past and present as well as possible future options of research on proteins and the absorption on different kinds of nanoparticles and related effects.

In his editorial the sociologist Nils Kubischok critically discusses the importance of past and present visions in nanomedical research [9]. The philosopher and STS-scholar Sacha Loeve discusses the historical roots and persistence of ‘war’-metaphors in current understandings of malign biomedical processes and related ways of nanomedical treatment [10]. Loeve also points out that novel metaphors beyond ‘war’ like that of the ‘oïkos:’ become powerful in understanding the social relevance of the nanobiomedical. Robin Pierce discusses the changes and potentialities of novel ‘therapeutic windows’ in translational nanomedicine [11]. Her paper analyzes three aspects of the therapeutic window in nanomedicine – temporal, spatial, and manner of construction in terms of the dimensions of modern medicine.

Diane Bowman and Jake Gatof outline the regulatory barriers for nanomedicine and emerging global questions and challenges of regulation [12]. They explore both existing and suggested frameworks that aim to deal with the regulation of emerging technologies and outline priority areas for action and general conclusions specific to nanomedicine. Jain’s editorial touches upon the issues of safety and ethics as well as personalized medicine [13].

While the majority of research in the field of nanomedicine addresses the therapy of cancer, Almeida [14], Owen and Rannard [15] as well as Zentel and Lehr [16] provide overviews on other unmet medical needs which may be tackled by nanomedical research. Antonio Almeida and co-authors describe the urgent medical need for nanoparticle platforms targeting bone infections, which are a severe problem in wound healing [14]. The authors expect that nanomedicines will provide new tools in the therapy of bone infections by providing an improved antibacterial and antibiofilm activity. Rudolf Zentel, Claus-Michael Lehr and co-authors also highlight the possible use of nanomedicines in the therapy of bacterial infections, but also describe concepts for nanoparticle-based tumor immune therapies [16]. In both approaches it is hoped that the intrinsic properties of nanomedicines can improve the therapeutic outcome. Andrew Owen and Steven Rannard on solid drug nanoparticles as a technology discuss a significantly different idea of drug delivery systems [15]. They also highlight special considerations for the treatment of chronic diseases such as HIV.

Clearly, though, cancer therapy remains a mainstay in nanomedicine research. Meiners and Bölükbas [17], as well as Christoph Alexiou [18] and co-authors provide comprehensive overviews on cancer nanomedicines. While Bölükbas and Meiners describe concepts for nanoparticle-mediated drug delivery for the therapy of lung cancer, Alexiou and co-authors outline the concept of magnetic field-guided drug delivery to solid tumors.

We hope that this special issue may help to bring the different actors of nanomedicine closer together and encourage scientists to better understand other actors which act outside their own comfort zone. We believe this special issue is rather unique in assembling scientists, philosophers, clinicians and social scientists. As such, it is the beginning of an experiment in itself to rethink nanomedicine in the making.
Financial & competing interests disclosure

Financial support for M Barz by the German Research Council (SFB 1066), CINEMA and the NMFZ Mainz is gratefully acknowledged. Financial support for R Luxenhofer through start-up funding by the Julius-Maximilians Universität Würzburg and the German Plastics Center SKZ is gratefully acknowledged. The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Happy reading!

Responsible science communication and magic bullets; lego and pasta analogies; sing about physics

Cancer’s ‘magic bullet],  a term which has been around for decades, is falling into disuse and deservedly. So it’s disturbing to see it used by someone in McGill University’s (Montreal, Canada) communications department for a recent breakthrough by their researchers.

The reason ‘magic bullet for cancer’ has been falling into is disuse because it does not function well as a metaphor with what we now know about biology. (The term itself dates from the 19th century and chemist, Paul Erlich.) It continues to exist because it’s an easy (and lazy) way to get attention and headlines. Unfortunately, hyperbolic writing of this type obscures the extraordinary and exciting work that researchers are accomplishing. From the news release on the McGill website (also available on Nanowerk here),

A team of McGill Chemistry Department researchers led by Dr. Hanadi Sleiman has achieved a major breakthrough in the development of nanotubes – tiny “magic bullets” that could one day deliver drugs to specific diseased cells.

The lead researcher seems less inclined to irresponsible hyperbole,

One of the possible future applications for this discovery is cancer treatment. However, Sleiman cautions, “we are still far from being able to treat diseases using this technology; this is only a step in that direction. Researchers need to learn how to take these DNA nanostructures, such as the nanotubes here, and bring them back to biology to solve problems in nanomedicine, from drug delivery, to tissue engineering to sensors,” she said.

You’ll notice that the researcher says these ‘DNA nanotubes’ have to be brought “back to biology.” This comment brought to mind a recent post on 2020 Science (Andrew Maynard’s blog) about noted chemist and nanoscientist’s, George Whitesides, concerns/doubts about the direction for cancer and nanotechnology research. From Andrew’s post,

Cancer treatment has been a poster-child for nanotechnology for almost as long as I’ve been involved with the field. As far back as in 1999, a brochure on nanotechnology published by the US government described future “synthetic anti-body-like nanoscale drugs or devices that might seek out and destroy malignant cells wherever they might be in the body.”

So I was somewhat surprised to see the eminent chemist and nano-scientist George Whitesides questioning how much progress we’ve made in developing nanotechnology-based cancer treatments, in an article published in the Columbia Chronicle.

Whitesides comments are quite illuminating (from the article, Microscopic particles have huge possibilites [sic], by Ivana Susic,

George Whitesides, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University, said that while the technology sounds impressive, he thinks the focus should be on using nanoparticles in imaging and diagnosing, not treatment.

The problem lies in being able to deliver the treatment to the right cells, and Whitesides said this has proven difficult.

“Cancer cells are abnormal cells, but they’re still us,” he said. [emphasis is mine]

The nanoparticles sent in to destroy the cancer cells may also destroy unaffected cells, because they can sometimes have cancer markers even if they’re healthy. Tumors have also been known to be “genetically flexible” and mutate around several different therapies, Whitesides explained. This keeps them from getting recognized by the therapeutic drugs.

The other problem with targeting cancer cells is the likelihood that only large tumors will be targeted, missing smaller clumps of developing tumors.

“We need something that finds isolated [cancer] clumps that’s somewhere else in the tissue … it’s not a tumor, it’s a whole bunch of tumors,” Whitesides said.

The upside to the treatment possibilities is that they buy the patient time, he said, which is very important to many cancer patients.

“It’s easy to say that one is going to have a particle that’s going to recognize the tumor once it gets there and will do something that triggers the death of the cell, it’s just that we don’t know how to do either one of these parts,” he said.

There is no simple solution. The more scientists learn about biology the more complicated it becomes, not less. [emphasis is mine] Whitesides said one effective way to deal with cancer is to reduce the risk of getting it by reducing the environmental factors that lead to cancer.

It’s a biology problem, not a particle problem,” he said. [emphasis is mine]

If you are interested , do read Andrew’s post and the comments that follow as well as the article that includes Whitesides’ comments and quotes from Andrew in his guise as Chief Science Advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies.

All of this discussion follows on yesterday’s (Mar.17.10) post about how confusing inaccurate science reporting can be.

Moving onwards to two analogies, lego and pasta. Researchers at the University of Glasgow have ‘built’ inorganic (not carbon-based) molecular structures which could potentionally be used as more energy efficient and environmentally friendly catalysts for industrial purposes. From the news item on Nanowerk,

Researchers within the Department of Chemistry created hollow cube-based frameworks from polyoxometalates (POMs) – complex compounds made from metal and oxygen atoms – which stick together like LEGO bricks meaning a whole range of well-defined architectures can be developed with great ease.

The molecular sensing aspects of this new material are related to the potassium and lithium ions, which sit loosely in cavities in the framework. These can be displaced by other positively charged ions such as transition metals or small organic molecules while at the same time leaving the framework intact.

These characteristics highlight some of the many potential uses and applications of POM frameworks, but their principle application is their use as catalysts – a molecule used to start or speed-up a chemical reaction making it more efficient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly.

Moving from lego to pasta with a short stop at the movies, we have MIT researchers describing how they and their team have found a way to ‘imprint’ computer chips by using a new electron-beam lithography process to encourage copolymers to self-assemble on the chip. (Currently, manufacturers use light lasers in a photolithographic process which is becoming less effective as chips grow ever smaller and light waves become too large to use.) From the news item on Nanowerk,

The new technique uses “copolymers” made of two different types of polymer. Berggren [Karl] compares a copolymer molecule to the characters played by Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin in the movie Midnight Run, a bounty hunter and a white-collar criminal who are handcuffed together but can’t stand each other. Ross [Caroline] prefers a homelier analogy: “You can think of it like a piece of spaghetti joined to a piece of tagliatelle,” she says. “These two chains don’t like to mix. So given the choice, all the spaghetti ends would go here, and all the tagliatelle ends would go there, but they can’t, because they’re joined together.” In their attempts to segregate themselves, the different types of polymer chain arrange themselves into predictable patterns. By varying the length of the chains, the proportions of the two polymers, and the shape and location of the silicon hitching posts, Ross, Berggren, and their colleagues were able to produce a wide range of patterns useful in circuit design.

ETA (March 18,2010): Dexter Johnson at Nanoclast continues with his his posts (maybe these will form a series?) about more accuracy in reporting, specifically the news item I’ve just highlighted. Check it out here.

To finish on a completely different note (pun intended), I have a link (courtesy of Dave Bruggeman of the Pasco Phronesis blog by way of the Science Cheerleader blog) to a website eponymously (not sure that’s the right term) named physicssongs.org. Do enjoy such titles as: I got Physics; Snel’s Law – Macarena Style!; and much, much more.

Tomorrow: I’m not sure if I’ll have time to do much more than link to it and point to some commentary but the UK’s Nanotechnologies Strategy has just been been released today.