Sunday, April 24, 2005
Blood Dust
Researchers at Washington University is St. Louis have developed blood-borne nanoparticles that can be loaded with a wide variety of drugs and directed to growing tumors.
The particles, each made of 100,000 molecules of undisclosed metal, carry an imaging agent that can be picked up by a MRI scanner and let doctors determine whether the drug reached its target. "When drug-bearing nanoparticles also contain an imaging agent, you can get a visible signal that allows you to measure how much medication got to the tumor," Gregory Lanza, associate professor of medicine. "You would know the same day you treated the patient and if the drug was at a therapeutic level." Since such imaging technology would disclose whether a drug therapy is working, it could dramatically lower doses typically used in chemotherapy, making the procedure potentially much safer.
The particles enter milimeter-sized, rapidly growing tumors by penetrating tiny new blood vessels, which feed them. To get the particles to bind to tumors, the researchers equipped them with tiny "hooks" that link only to complementary "loops" found on cells in newly forming blood vessels. When the nanoparticles hooked the "loops" on the new vessels' cells, they revealed the location of the tumors.
(For more on nano-MRI see Pumping Iron, March 20, and In Dust They Trust, March 17.)
The particles, each made of 100,000 molecules of undisclosed metal, carry an imaging agent that can be picked up by a MRI scanner and let doctors determine whether the drug reached its target. "When drug-bearing nanoparticles also contain an imaging agent, you can get a visible signal that allows you to measure how much medication got to the tumor," Gregory Lanza, associate professor of medicine. "You would know the same day you treated the patient and if the drug was at a therapeutic level." Since such imaging technology would disclose whether a drug therapy is working, it could dramatically lower doses typically used in chemotherapy, making the procedure potentially much safer.
The particles enter milimeter-sized, rapidly growing tumors by penetrating tiny new blood vessels, which feed them. To get the particles to bind to tumors, the researchers equipped them with tiny "hooks" that link only to complementary "loops" found on cells in newly forming blood vessels. When the nanoparticles hooked the "loops" on the new vessels' cells, they revealed the location of the tumors.
(For more on nano-MRI see Pumping Iron, March 20, and In Dust They Trust, March 17.)
