My power word in the news this week is anthrax. The article I found is titled “Chemists recruit anthrax to deliver cancer drugs” by Anne Trafton at the MIT news office. According to Trafton, Bacillus anthacis, the bacteria whose common name is anthrax, has very productive machinery inserting toxic proteins into cells. Due to this efficient mechanism, scientists are developing ways to use it as a delivery for antibodies that target cancer cells. When developing treatments the main difficulty is crossing the cell membrane so that antibodies can be distributed into the cell. Anthrax has origins that date back to 1250 BC, it has had a long time to develop and perfect a way to efficiently get its toxins into its target cells. Using this age old system, the sections of bacillus anthacis that are toxic can be removed and replaced with antibody mimics and the unit can be used to deliver drugs across the membrane. The antibody mimics can be designed in such a way that they can target certain proteins within the cell. So far this method has been used to target several proteins, such as one that causes chronic myeloid leukemia, once the protein is disrupted the cell undergoes apoptosis.

        This article was well written and easy to understand for someone who doesn’t know every detail about anthrax and its mechanisms. Anne Trafton, the author of this article, is just a writer more MIT, so she is not an expert in this subject. However, Trafton references the current research and includes excerpts from the scientists doing the research, so it is relatively credible. It is by no means peer-reviewed, rather it is an informative article that summarizes a new technique using the mechanisms of anthrax, an ancient bacteria.

 

http://news.mit.edu/2014/cancer-drug-delivery-by-anthrax-0925