Programmable Nanomedicine Cancer Treatment Shrinks Human Tumors

Chemotherapy treatment for cancer is a nasty process. Doctors must try to give patients just enough of the toxic drugs to kill off cancer cells without doing too much harm to the rest of the body’s healthy tissues, a balancing act that, even if successful, can nevertheless cause horrible side effects.

But what if you could program the harsh medicine to go only to the cancerous cells, sparing the rest of the body? Researchers have been aiming for this goal for more than 100 years and have achieved some success in targeted treatment by using monoclonal antibodies in immunotherapy. Getting chemotherapy to cancer cells, however, has proved difficult. A new nanotechnology might just finally bring it into reach.

Scientists have spent the past few decades tinkering with nanopaticles, and recently they have been able to cover them with cancer-seeking proteins and load them with a tumor-busting drug. But these tiny particles, hundreds of which could fit across the width of a human hair, have so far failed to perform in humans.

A new tumor-targeting, nanoparticle-based compound called BIND-014 is now in clinical trials in people, after showing promise in both mice and monkeys. Although this first trial is small, with only 17 patients, and still ongoing, researchers are reporting some positive results, and no obvious major safety setbacks, according to a paper published online April 4 in Science Translational Medicine.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/04/04/programmable-nanomedicine-cancer-treatment-shrinks-human-tumors/

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