Robots deployed in cancer battle
March 23, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
UNITED States researchers have developed tiny nanoparticle robots that can travel through a patient's blood and into tumors where they deliver a therapy that turns off an important cancer gene.
The finding, reported in the journal Nature, offers early proof that a new treatment approach called RNA interference or RNAi might work in people.
RNA stands for ribonucleic acid - a chemical messenger that is emerging as a key player in the disease process.
Dozens of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are looking for ways to manipulate RNA to block genes that make disease-causing proteins involved in cancer, blindness or AIDS.
But getting the treatment to the right target in the body has presented a challenge.
A team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena used nanotechnology - the science of really small objects - to create tiny polymer robots covered with a protein called transferrin that seek out a receptor or molecular doorway on many different types of tumors.
"This is the first study to be able to go in there and show it's doing its mechanism of action," said Mark Davis, a professor of chemical engineering, who led the study.
"We're excited about it because there is a lot of skepticism whenever any new technology comes in," said Davis, a consultant to Calando Pharmaceuticals Inc, which is developing the therapy.
In a phase 1 clinical trial in patients with various types of tumors, the team gave doses of the targeted nanoparticles four times over 21 days in a 30-minute intravenous infusion. Tumor samples taken from three people with melanoma showed the nanoparticles found their way inside tumor cells.
The finding, reported in the journal Nature, offers early proof that a new treatment approach called RNA interference or RNAi might work in people.
RNA stands for ribonucleic acid - a chemical messenger that is emerging as a key player in the disease process.
Dozens of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are looking for ways to manipulate RNA to block genes that make disease-causing proteins involved in cancer, blindness or AIDS.
But getting the treatment to the right target in the body has presented a challenge.
A team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena used nanotechnology - the science of really small objects - to create tiny polymer robots covered with a protein called transferrin that seek out a receptor or molecular doorway on many different types of tumors.
"This is the first study to be able to go in there and show it's doing its mechanism of action," said Mark Davis, a professor of chemical engineering, who led the study.
"We're excited about it because there is a lot of skepticism whenever any new technology comes in," said Davis, a consultant to Calando Pharmaceuticals Inc, which is developing the therapy.
In a phase 1 clinical trial in patients with various types of tumors, the team gave doses of the targeted nanoparticles four times over 21 days in a 30-minute intravenous infusion. Tumor samples taken from three people with melanoma showed the nanoparticles found their way inside tumor cells.
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