UCLA researchers create new method that targets tumors with the same effectiveness but a significant reduction in both side effects and cost.
The study, published online in the journal ACS Nano, describes successful experiments to combine two drugs within a specially designed mesoporous silica nanoparticle that looks like a glass bubble. The drugs work together to shrink human pancreas tumors in mice as successfully as the current standard treatment, but at one twelfth the dosage. This lower dosage could reduce both the cost of treatment and the side effects that people suffer from the current method.
The study was led by Dr. Huan Meng, assistant adjunct professor of medicine, and Dr. Andre Nel, distinguished professor of medicine, both at the Jonsson Cancer Center.
Pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer, a devastating disease with a five-year survival rate of 5 percent, is difficult to detect early and symptoms do not usually appear until the disease is advanced. As a result, many people are not diagnosed until their tumors are beyond the effective limits of surgery, leaving chemotherapy as the only viable treatment option. The chemotherapy drug most often used for pancreas cancer is gemcitabine, but its impact is often limited.
New treatment
Recent research has found that combining gemcitabine with another drug called paclitaxel can improve the overall treatment effect. In the current method, Abraxane — a nano complex containing paclitaxel — and gemcitabine are given separately, which works to a degree, but because the drugs may stay in the body for different lengths of time, the combined beneficial effect is not fully synchronized.
“The beauty of the silica nanoparticle technology is that gemcitabine and paclitaxel are placed together in one special lipid-coated nanoparticle at the exact ratio that makes them synergistic with one another when co-delivered at the cancer site, giving us the best possible outcome by using a single drug carrier,” Meng said. “This enables us to reduce the dose and maintain the combinatorial effect.”
Initially the treatment tested in mice.In the mice that received the drugs inside the nanoparticle, pancreas tumors shrank dramatically.And also tumor spread, to nearby organs was eradicated in these mice.
Meng said the silica nanocarrier must still be refined for use in humans. The researchers hope to test the platform in human clinical trials within the next five years.
The research was supported by the U.S. Public Health Service and the National Science Foundation.
Source:UCLA
