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Quantum dot drugs

Attach a quantum dot to every FDA drug, then test to find any that work better
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Quantum dots are sometimes around 1 nanometer, and eentsy molecule drugs like the longevity drug rapamycin are about 1-2 picometers wide, hundreds of times eentsier. Attaching a drug to a quantum dot would strongly change its charge, electron distribution and orbital shapes. Some of the time this would make the drug more effective, especially with quantum dots engineered to be purpose specific. As a commercial incentive all FDA drugs could be reengineered and repatented this way.

It could be possible to further tune the energetics of the new drug molecule-dots. Quantum dots absorb energy at particular frequencies of light and emit photons, if they can be engineered to respond to infrared photons at the frequency a well or unwell body produces then the power range they influence the drug molecule with would be wider and even more customizable.

Quantum dot drugs possibly have completely different tissue and cytotype localizations than source drugs assisting with beneficial localization to particular structures and neurons in the brain and for localizing anticancer drugs. Another localization opportunity if the quantum dots respond to IR is the specific temperatures between tissues, or warmth at an infection site or a fever.

beanangel, Mar 14 2020

10-30% of quantum dots with a peptide attached to them reach the cytoplasm https://pubs.acs.or...s/10.1021/nn900663r
[beanangel, Mar 16 2020]

Drug Antibody Conjugation https://en.wikipedi...body-drug_conjugate
[bs0u0155, Mar 16 2020]


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Annotation:







       I just had a pang of missing Max. This is a complicated idea beany, like many of your ideas, and in the past I've always gone directly to Max's question, evaluation or dismissive joke in the annotations to get his summary.   

       My next move would be to go to 8's annotation. A thumb's down from Max and 8 and I'd move on. Approval from one and I'd read the idea carefully until I got what it was about. In the event of a rare disagreement between the two I'd get really interested.   

       OK 8, you're my main wingman now. (Just uh.. stay off my 6.) Does this make any sense?
doctorremulac3, Mar 14 2020
  

       Oh dear. It would take me at least an hour of Googling to even start to understand this, and it's too late in the evening.
wagster, Mar 14 2020
  

       I thought it was just me, thanks wags, for helping me out here.
blissmiss, Mar 15 2020
  

       OK, working backwards from the end, here is my amateur's understanding:   

       1. Some medical conditions, including cancers and neurological conditions, can be treated by delivering certain molecules to bind to certain very specific other molecules in the diseased or damaged tissue.   

       2. Quantum dots can communicate with their surroundings both by sending and receiving photons, the implication being that incoming photons can modulate their behaviour in some way. (I'm not sure what the outgoing photons are doing for us, except perhaps helping us to locate the fiddly little things if we drop one).   

       3. The idea is to use quantum dots to deliver drugs to the sites where they're needed.   

       Please confirm [beany], whether that is correct as far as it goes.   

       Now, what is *not* clear to me:   

       A) Are you proposing to use the dots to move the drugs to their targets, or only to change the behaviour of the drugs when they arrive?   

       B) Assuming the latter, are you expecting the dots (i) to change the orientation of the drug molecules so as to promote successful binding, (ii) to catalyse a chemical reaction between drug and target site, (iii) to provide a physical rather than chemical input (such as heat to promote reaction) and/or (iv) something else entirely?   

       C) How and why would you aim photons at the quantum dots to change their behaviour? C.1) Would this imply that you were tracking and targeting individual dots, or were you just going to bathe the whole affected area in a diffuse photon glow?   

       D) Can you provide a worked example of any of the above?
pertinax, Mar 15 2020
  

       [pertinax] It is simpler than that. [beanangel] wants to attach the quantum dots to the drugs to make new ones. Maybe with light tuning abilities.   

       My problem with this, is the attachment part.
wjt, Mar 15 2020
  

       Chime in here beany, are PT and (or) WJ correct in their evaluations here?   

       Here's the thing, I don't know if this is interesting or not. Which I guess is sort of interesting.
doctorremulac3, Mar 15 2020
  

       Once the idea of attaching all known drugs to quantum dots is proposed, isn't "attach <insert drug here> to quantum dots" then obvious, and therefore not patentable, for every drug? What could be patentable, I guess, are the details of the attachment and the specific type of quantum dot used for each drug.
notexactly, Mar 15 2020
  

       There's 3 main problems that jump out at me:   

       1. Quantum dots aren't cell permeable. They're really really not cell permeable. This is because they're huge, so much so that they interact with the environment as a large crystal, they can't dissolve into membranes in the conventional sense, and they're larger than many of the vesicles involved in pino/endocytosis.   

       2. Quantum dots are massive. One of the great features of QDs is that you can see them in electron microscopy, that's because they're incredibly electron dense - something they share with other electron microscopy stains, such as osmium tetroxide and uranyl acetate. That means that each QD attached to each drug will increase the mass by thousands to millions of fold. So, now your dose of paracetamol/acetaminophen might be 10 kg.   

       3. Attaching drugs to things isn't straightforward. Take lithium. Effective drug that floats around as an individual ion. You can't attach something to that. Same with most drugs, simply saying you're going to link it to something, anything really, means fundamentally changing the molecule. Different drug right from the outset, all the trials etc/safety is out the window.   

       Also, the fluorescence properties of QDs can't operate how you describe. Generally, fluorescence requires excitation by a shorter wavelenth light, e.g. 488nm blue, some energy is wasted and a longer wavelength light e.g. 550nm green is emitted. Low grade heat IR can't be re-emitted as anything useful.
bs0u0155, Mar 15 2020
  

       // [pertinax] It is simpler than that. [beanangel] wants to attach the quantum dots to the drugs to make new ones. Maybe with light tuning abilities.//   

       Your interpretation is what I meant, thank you!   

       As to quantum dots being too big for things like endocytosis, I found a [link] that suggests that 10-30% of quantum dots with a peptide attached to them pass to the cytoplasm
beanangel, Mar 16 2020
  

       Just looking at one site, there are companies selling conjugated quantum dots of various molecules from antibody, surface and vitamin binding. So there is precedence for attachment but some is never all without complications.   

       My next worry is quantum dots aren't really that natural, an artifact technology out of our desire for scaling atom position and knowledge. Being benign and exceptional glowey just doesn't sit right.   

       Or have we found natural quantum dots floating around? Just double check they are not down stream, out of a lab.
wjt, Mar 16 2020
  

       //10-30% of quantum dots with a peptide attached to them pass to the cytoplasm//   

       I read the paper. QDs were delivered to a single layer of one type of in-vitro* cultured cell line. They were delivered to the cytosol apparently. I'd dispute that to an extent. They're excluded from the nucleus in most cases, and we use the nucleus as a handy proxy for things that are supposed to be soluble in the cytosol. Instead, what tends to happen to these things, is that the cell imports them, doesn't know what to do with the cargo, and so leave them hanging around in membrane bound vesicles essentially forever.   

       I'd love it if cells did take up QDs, I could use that right now. It would mean we could label a protein with an antibody conjugated QD and visualize it in live-cell fluorescence and then fix the cells and take a really close look in transmission electron microscopy of the same exact thing. The problem is it doesn't work.   

       Imagine what happens to that 10-30% uptake when we look in the cell types they didn't show us? Then imagine what happens in tightly packed tissues, in cells that don't do much endocytosis?   

       Drug linkage/conjugation is usually done with peptide bonds, disulfides or hydrozones. Not many drugs are amenable to that, some, sure.
bs0u0155, Mar 16 2020
  

       // cultured cell line //   

       Presumably the ones that appreciate opera, and visit art museums on their days off.
8th of 7, Mar 16 2020
  


 

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