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Tiny "Russian doll-like" particles that deliver multiple drugs to brain tumors, developed by MIT researchers and funded by Cancer Research UK, are at the center of a new international collaboration.
Professor Paula Hammond of the Department of Chemical Engineering has developed nanoparticle technology, which will be used to treat glioblastoma – the most aggressive and deadly type of brain tumor.
Hammond will work with Professor Michael Yaffe of the Department of Biological Engineering to determine the drug combinations placed in the particles, as well as the order and timing of their release.
Nanoparticles – 1,000 times smaller than a human hair – are embedded in a protein called transferrin, which helps them to cross the blood-brain barrier. It is a membrane that tightly controls everything that tries to enter the brain, including drugs.
Nanoparticles are not only able to access hard-to-reach areas of the brain, but they have also been designed to carry multiple anti-cancer drugs at a time by holding them within multiple layers of the same way that the Russian dolls fit into each other.
To make the nanoparticles even more effective, they will carry signals on their surface, so that they will only be picked up by the tumor cells of the brain. This means that healthy cells must remain intact, which will minimize the side effects of treatment.
Researchers, based at the Koch Institute for Integrated Cancer Research, are also working with Professor Forest White of the Department of Biological Engineering. The group is one of three international teams to receive Cancer Tumor UK awards from Cancer Research UK – in partnership with The Brain Tumor Charity – which received $ 7.9 million in funding. Prices are designed to accelerate the pace of research on brain tumors. In total, the teams received $ 23 million.
Last year, about 24,200 people in the United States were diagnosed with brain tumors. With about 17,500 deaths from brain tumors in the same year, the survival rate remains tragically low.
Brain tumors are one of the most difficult types of cancer to treat because we do not know enough about what triggers the disease and about itself, and current treatments are not effective enough.
MIT researchers will now work with teams in the United Kingdom and Europe to use nanoparticles in multiple drug therapies for glioblastoma treatment.
Early research in the laboratory has already shown that nanoparticles loaded with two different drugs were able to reduce glioblastoma in mice. The team has also demonstrated that nanoparticles can kill lab-grown lymphoma cells, and is also studying their use in ovarian cancer.
The UK Cancer Tumor Award from Cancer Research will now allow researchers and their badociates to use different drug combinations to find the best settings for controlling glioblastoma.
Previously approved drugs, as well as experimental drugs that have pbaded the initial safety tests, will be used. For this reason, if an effective combination of drugs is found, the team will not have to overcome the initial regulatory hurdles necessary to submit them to clinical trials, which could allow patients to obtain promising treatments more quickly.
"Glioblastoma is particularly difficult because we want combinations of highly effective but toxic drugs safely beyond the blood-brain barrier, but we also want our nanoparticles to avoid healthy brain cells and target only cancer cells. "said Hammond. We are very excited about this alliance between the MIT Koch Institute and our colleagues in Edinburgh to address these critical challenges. "
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