Nanoparticles Created To Treat Cancer Tumors

 MIT Develops Nanoparticles That Cross the Blood-Brain Barrier To Treat Cancer Tumors

Tested using a new brain tissue model, the tiny particles may be able to deliver chemotherapy drugs for glioblastoma, a fast-growing and aggressive type of cancer. 

Currently, there are very few good treatment options for glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer with a high fatality rate. One reason that the disease is so difficult to treat is that most chemotherapy drugs can’t penetrate the blood vessels that surround the brain. A team of scientists at MIT is now developing drug-carrying nanoparticles that appear to get into the brain more efficiently than drugs given on their own. Using a human tissue model they designed, which accurately replicates the blood-brain barrier, the scientists showed that the particles could get into tumors and kill glioblastoma cells. In the past, many potential glioblastoma treatments have shown success in animal models but then ended up failing in clinical trials. This suggests that a better kind of modeling is needed, says Joelle Straehla, the Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Clinical Investigator at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, an instructor at Harvard Medical School, and a pediatric oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. “We are hoping that by testing these nanoparticles in a much more realistic model, we can cut out a lot of the time and energy that’s wasted trying things in the clinic that don’t work,” she says. “Unfortunately, for this type of brain tumor, there have been hundreds of trials that have had negative results.” Read more...

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