Nanoparticles Communicate With Each Other To Kill Cancer Cells

Biotech and nanotechnology experts in the US have created a new class of nanoparticles that can be used in effective treatment of cancer and other deadly diseases. The salient feature of these particles is that they can call other particles to the location where they have detected the target cells or tumor. The scientists all around the globe have been trying to develop such target centric pills and drugs but have achieved little success till now. These drugs help to mitigate the toxic reactions of these chemotherapy drugs to other parts of the body. Until recently, all such drugs had a success rate of hardly 1 % i.e. only one out of every hundred medicine particles reached the desired location. However the MIT scientists teamed up with fellow researchers from the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, and the University of California at San Diego to develop a novel technique for delivering the doses of pill to the epicenter of the disease. In this approach, the first batch of nanoparticles detects the tumor cells and then alerts a second larger group of particles to attack this location. Biochemical reactions taking place in the human body enable the communication link to be established between these awesome nanoparticles.
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The drug using these nanoparticles was recently tested on mice and the results proved that these nanoparticles are almost 40 times efficient than the conventional drugs. A scientific paper describing the research work for this drug delivery system got published in the June 19 online issue of the famed science journal Nature Materials. Geoffrey von Maltzahn, the lead author of this paper believes that these nanoparticles could revolutionize the way in which the medicines work for fatal diseases like cancer, etc. He is a MIT doctoral alumni and currently working at the Flagship VentureLabs in Cambridge. The main thing that these particles demonstrated was the ability to communicate with each other, which is a very complex activity involving the body’s biochemistry. It proved that particles could be engineered and modified so that they can send and receive signals and home in on the affected cells. Sangeeta Bhatia, the senior author of this paper is a member of MIT's David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and also holds the distinct honor of being the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at MIT. She said that she was inspired by the different natural activities that take place in the body and require synchronization between various components for achieving a common goal. An example of such a complex action is the immune system of our body that requires great co ordination between different entities and cells.
This unique approach is based on the concept of the blood coagulation cascade. This phenomenon actually takes place when our body senses an injury to any blood vessel. Once the injury is detected, a chain of complex reactions take place and the proteins called the clotting factors form fibrin strands that seal the spot to cease the bleeding. For this scheme to work, the researchers developed two types of cells- senders and receivers. The signaling nanoparticles detect the tumors by exiting from the blood stream and come in contact with the tumor via the miniscule orifices in the vessels near the affected region. As soon as this happens, the particles undergo a reaction that causes the body to believe that there is an injury at the location. This is achieved by either emitting heat or by connecting with the protein that initiates the cascade. The receiving nanoparticles are present along with the proteins that synthesize fibrin. As a result, they are attracted to the desired location automatically. The experiments conducted on mice showed a significantly better treatment of tumors as a 40 fold larger dose of doxorubicin (a drug used to treat many types of cancer) reached the tumor cells. The MIT scientists are now focusing on using these nanoparticles in combination with the drugs already being tested in patients. Let’s hope that this research leads to effective treatment and reduces the mortality rate in the patients.
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