August 7th, 2009
US researchers are confident in Nanoparticle’s ability to carry cancer-killing radioisotopes directly to tumors.
Nanoparticles are made-up of liposomes, small chemical orbs that consist of fatty molecules that can be composed to deliver various drugs and chemicals, which can further be manipulated to control how long they stay within the bloodstream.
Researchers at John Hopkins University, began fixating cancer-specific antibodies to liposomes, in an effort to develop immunoliposomes that will move through the bloodstream and search out tumors.
On a mouse laboratory study, radiology professor George Sgouros and his team loaded the immunoliposomes with alpha-particle emitters, which are powerful radioisotopes that can destroy cancer cells without damaging neighboring healthy cells. This form of treatment drastically prolonged the survival of those mice suffering from aggressive metastatic breast cancer.
Sgourous notes that the treatment is much less “toxic than chemotherapy because it is targeted to tumor cells rather than to all rapidly dividing cells … [the] Nanoparticles design delivers these powerful isotopes [and has] a great potential in cancer therapy, particularly for metastatic disease.”
