Successful fabrication of nanoparticles carries many types of cancer drugs

Scientists are still developing new and innovative methods to use drug-distributed nanoparticles to kill cancer cells inside the body without causing side effects.

What scientists have not done is to increase the capacity of nanoparticles so that they can carry more than one drug, but until today, the MIT institute has announced that it has made a revolutionary step in cubic technology. building block when it is possible to load into 3 different drug nanoparticles.

MIT said this approach could be extended to allow nanoparticles to carry even hundreds of drugs.

Nanoparticle design generally does not allow scaling because they must be pre-shaped and then encapsulated internal drug molecules or chemically bound drug molecules into nanoparticles. Attempts to add drugs to this structure make it more difficult to perfect nanoparticles.

Nanoparticle models carry 3 types of anticancer drugs: doxorubicin red, small green camptothexin, and large green cisplatin core.

To overcome these limitations, Jeremiah Johnson - associate professor of chemistry at MIT created nanoparticle building blocks and these blocks contain the required drug. Called "mass polymerization from the start" , this approach allows researchers to integrate many drugs into a single nanoparticle and control the exact amount of each drug.

Associate Professor Johnson said: "This is a new way to make nanoparticles from the start. If I want a nanoparticle containing 5 drugs, I just take 5 building blocks containing the desired drug and insert it into Basically, there is no limit to the amount of medicine you can add to the grain and the percentage of the drug that the grain can take depends only on how they are mixed together from the beginning. "

Besides drugs, each building block contains a link unit that allows it to easily connect with other building blocks and a protective compound to ensure that the drug remains in its original state until it enters the cell. This method not only allows different building blocks to be assembled into many specific structures but also allows each drug to be released independently in the cell through its own activation mechanisms.

The team tested nanoparticles containing three drugs commonly used to treat ovarian cancer, including doxorubicin, cisplatin and camptothecin on laboratory cancer cells. The results showed the ability of new nanoparticles when they destroyed cancer cells at a higher rate than nanoparticles containing fewer drugs.

Nanoparticles are designed to release doxorubicin under ultraviolet light, in the picture: ovarian cancer cells turn red when doxorubicin is continuously secreted over time.

"We think this is the first nanoparticle experiment that can contain the exact amount of drug in three drugs and can deliver drugs corresponding to three different activation mechanisms , " Johnson said. In this case, cisplatin in nanoparticles was immediately taken to the cell and it reacted to the presence of an antioxidant found in ovarian cancer cells called glutathione . When nanoparticles encounter a cellular enzyme called esterase, it releases the second drug, camptothecin. Finally, when exposed to ultraviolet light, doxorubicin is activated, leaving only biodegradable residues of nanoparticles.

Researchers believe that this potential method could be used to connect hundreds of building blocks to create a type of nanoparticles containing many drugs and pave the way for new, non-invasive forms of cancer treatment. Side effects like traditional chemotherapy. The MIT team is currently looking to improve nanoparticles so that it can carry four drugs and start testing animal cancer cells.

A detailed report of MIT research has just been published in the American Chemical Society.