New 'Guided Missile' Targets Breast Cancer

A recent breakthrough could assist in combating breast cancer. Using a "mini antibody called a diabody, and packing a radioactive isotope, these target the cancer directly. They apear to be very effective because they can penatrate the tumor and take the firght right into the cancers house for a lack of better word. This is an development of using monoclonal antibodies which are to big to penatrate the tumor completely. Keep up the good work.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In mice carrying specimens of human breast cancer, treatment with a genetically engineered mini-antibody, or "diabody," laden with a radioactive isotope significantly impeded the growth of the tumors, researchers report.

Overall, we are very pleased with the results, which show that anti-tumor diabody-based radioimmunotherapy can be an effective form of therapy," Dr. Gregory P. Adams from the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia told Reuters Health.

Since the mid-1980s, so-called monoclonal antibodies have become familiar as a way to target isotopes to tumor cells. "This approach is hindered by the large size of monoclonal antibodies and their very nature, which is to remain in the blood a long time," Dr. Adams explained.

Diabodies, which are one-third the size of monoclonal antibodies, are better able to penetrate tumors and are cleared rapidly from the bloodstream.

In mice, a single dose of diabodies tagged with yttrium-90 significantly delayed the rate of growth of implanted human breast tumors, but fell short of inhibiting human ovarian cancers, Adams' team reports in the journal Cancer Research.
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