Nanoparticles could lead to stronger drugs, fewer side effects for cancer patients
August 30, 2012
Fluorescent microscopy of HTC116 (human colorectal tumor) xenograft mice treated with CRLX288 and tumors removed 24 hours post dosing. CRLX288 was developed with Cerulean’s proprietary PEGylated polymeric nanoparticle technology (PNP) (Credit: Cerulean)
A biotech company called Cerulean says its nanoparticle-delivered cancer drugs are better at attacking tumors, Technology Review reports.
One result of the side effects of cancer treatments is that patients often can’t tolerate or survive a combination of different drugs at the same time — which can limit a doctor’s ability to knock out the disease. The head of a Boston-area biotech called Cerulean Therapeutics thinks the solution is nanoparticle-delivered drugs, which have fewer and less severe side effects. They could make it easier for doctors to mount a multipronged attack on tumors and kill the cells before they can develop a resistance to any one compound.
Cancer cells can develop resistance to individual drugs very quickly, says Oliver Fetzer, CEO of Cerulean. And he points to recent studies showing that different cells within the same tumor can have different genetic mutations. In some cases, that means that a drug that kills cancer cells in one part of a tumor may not work in other parts. This tumor diversity suggests that it would be best to hit cancer cells with multiple drugs at once to make it extremely difficult for the tumor to develop resistance to all therapies.
Nanoparticles could help achieve this goal. The nanoparticles developed by Cerulean are too big to get out of blood vessels and into healthy tissue, but they are the right size to get into tumors because the blood vessels that grow around cancer tissue have pores or gaps that aren’t found in healthy tissue.
Cerulean’s nanoparticle acts like time-release packaging — instead of dumping all the cancer drug into the tumor at one time, the nanoparticle slowly breaks down and releases the drug bit by bit.
Another player in the nanoparticle-delivery space, BIND Biosciences, adds a layer of specificity to its delivery by affixing targeting molecules to the outside of its nanoparticles (see “Fine-tuning Nanotech to Target Cancer“). The targeting molecules recognize proteins on the outside of cancer cells and so help bring the nanopharmaceutical to its desired location.
The company expects to have results from its human trials of its lead compound in treating lung cancers by the end of the 2012. It recently began testing the effectiveness of the same compound in ovarian cancer patients. To begin to explore the possibility of combining nanoparticle-based cancer drugs with other therapies, Cerulean is also enrolling patients with kidney cancer in a phase I trial that will combine the company’s lead compound with bevacizumab, a commercially available cancer drug used in a variety of cancers.
Comments (20)
by Bri
Ray spoke of research into the genes that control the storage of fat inside the body. In mice if this gene is turned off they don’t get fat, diabetic, or get heart disease. They also get the life expectancy increases that are associated with calory restriction. Seeing how those issues are the biggies of our blotted health care system, you’d think it would be top priority. That one treatment could save trillions of dollars, from medical costs to increased productivity. I think it’s being shelved like Daniel Noccera’s artificial leaf. All you people out there who want relief should band together and force the research and implementation. Find the research. See what the hold up is and fund solutions. If you all do this it’s an unstoppable force that would bring transparency to the research. Think of all the suffering it would alleviate, from primary to secondary to tertiary. It’s a classic case where the power of group mind could overcome the systems purposeful lethargy!
by Gabriel
Like I just told Dana…I don’t think it’s a matter of anything being shelved; just that it’s too early….I do recall hearing about this “fat insulin gene receptors” as well, and that companies were trying to create them for the human-market…again, in my opinion, it’s not a matter of anything being shelved or controlled — it’s just too early.
But this decade is supposedly supposed to be the ‘revolution’ in genetics, and it IS only 2012 after all…a ridiculous amount gets done in a single year (think of all we’ve seen this year alone), so we may very well see such fat receptors, and all sorts of other incredible biotech before the decade is up.
by marty weiss
has anyone solved the problem of toxicity of nanoparticles in fish?
by Dana
I am in my late 20′s, and I have been wondering where all these advances are at too. I have been following these type of stories for close to 15 years, and yet as the first poster put it best, not a lot has changed. I’ve been hearing about nano-medicine for quite a long time (by my standards) yet there is still nothing world changing out there. Is it really just hold ups caused by hospitals? Their refusal to use certain products, thus bankrupting companies who have these items? Or does the technology ultimately fail?
by Gabriel
Well, Kurzweil says that the nano-tech revolution won’t really begin until the 2020′s since Age of Spirtual Machines, with the first practical applications being medicine…
Of course, he also says that this decade will be “Bridge Two” – when genetics will reach it’s peak and people will ‘reprogram’ themselves and all sorts of things…so if he turns out correct, then we will have something to enhance ourselves in the meanwhile until nanotech (“Bridge Three”) starts to pick up steam.
As a whole…nanotech is simply not here yet – all these headlines are good news though because this is the basis for things we will see in near-future — I wouldn’t say that it has neither to do with companies refusing them or the tech failing….it’s just too early for nanotech to be considered practical, nevermind mainstream.
by MysticMonkeyGuru
“It’s just too early for nanotech to be considered practical, nevermind mainstream
I don’t think we’re anywhere near Bridge Two yet, let alone Bridge Three. I just can’t see Bridge Two starting off until the 2060s or 2070s, due to the Complexity Brake.
by Editor
Thanks, MMG. I’ll add that to my list, right after “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” and “640K ought to be enough for anyone.” :)
by Someone
As usual, you said nothing but bullshit. I never see any positive comments from you. Based on what you said, 2060 or 2070. It is about 48 to 58 years from now. Why? Because you just want to say Singularity will not happen in our life time. Right? Show some information to support what you said or I suggest you stop post comment here.
by Someone
I was replied to MysticMonkeyGuru’s comment.
by Bennie Beaver
All these kinds of research and development are exciting, and I’m sure of the honor of most researchers, but I’m still disappointed every time I go to the doctor and see and feel that little, to nothing, seems much different from 1970s, 80s, 90s, and in some cases, even the 1960s. I’m near 70 yrs. old and lucky to be healthy, but I get this sad feeling that health care is still too much a for-profit business. Yes, it’s true, researchers and companies need to make money, but goals of health care, from a purely scientific stand point, are still ultimately about putting hospitals, clinics, and doctors out of business. I wonder how much of that for-profit system is holding-up new advances in medicine?
I’m waiting for and hoping for big advances that I can see and feel in the doctor’s office, or even better, at home, on body 24/7 monitoring to smart systems like IBM Watson, etc…and yes I’ve read about IBM’s efforts to develop Watson into Iphones.
Thanks for all the hard working scientist and let’s get those great ideas out there to the public. I know you will do it. I do believe in Ray Kurzweil’s “the singularity is near”, but wonder who will receive its benefits in the end considering the history of life on earth.
by alliwant
I’m in my mid 50s and wonder the same thing. Seems like developments are coming faster and faster, but the lag time to application is not accelerating at all. And I also agree that for-profit medicine inherently skews the priorities of medicine. The end deliverable is health, and that does not translate well into dollars and cents.
by Bill Johnson
Why isn’t more of the money raised to fight cancer (with few, if any, results shown) spent on teaching the populace how to prevent cancer? Detoxification,nutrition,exercise,etc. Oh,I guess I know,there is no money in that.
Bill
by Bruce Wright
There’s a lot of cancer cases for which we just simply don’t know a cause.
Additionally, I think a lot information on reducing the likelihood of cancer is readily available, and even well-publicized – but most people don’t want to disturb their lifestyles.
by Gabriel
I can completely understand you — as exciting as these innovations are, the greatest innovation is when it hits mainstream and the common man can benefit from it…until then, as wonderful as accomplishments can be, it often feels like it’s merely a headline.
by Marc
I think you are correct, it’s hard to see change in healthcare. It’s a conservative business — I’ve heard one estimate that it takes 17 years for a new method to be accepted medical practice. This is addressing nanotechnology for therapies, so has to be proven safe and effective. Some are likely to be tested according to NCI in a year or so. So that’s potentially great news. But cancer is a tough nut. Also nano sensors have huge potential for detecting changes earlier — 90% of cancers can be eliminated if detected early.
by Randy
Any idea how someone could inquire about participating in the trials?
by Editor
http://www.ceruleanrx.com/clinical_trials.html
by melajara
You make all the efforts to gauge the best therapy for you, you investigate, actually you chose a promising new therapy, you beg your doctor to recommend you for inclusion in the next trial, you visit several others with the same lobbying effort, you make all the diligent efforts to meet all the criteria.
And yes, it comes, you are enrolled.
You patiently submit to the protocol, you go several more times to the hospital than on a regular therapy and submit yourself to sometimes painful or humiliating examinations, but you are full of hope, you believe in the treatment.
But after 2 years you die.
Of course, you were put in the control group, wasted all that all too precious time on placebo!!!
This is haunting me: in blind or double blind studies, what can be done to ensure to be on the good side?
Per protocol, seemingly nothing, it’s all lottery.
by Jon
Their phase 1 test has no placebo group, it would seem. The phase 2 test does, but it is either currently effective treatment + placebo or currently effective treatment + newly being-tested drug.
The side taking the new therapy is not always the winning side. Rarely, but sometimes, nasty side-effects are discovered, and those on merely the traditional medicine fare better.
They do not make placebo groups if the medicine being tested is almost certainly better than what is currently available, or if there is no current treatment – in such cases they merely see if the drug works or not. It does not have to compete versus current practice.
by Bruce Wright
Unfortunately there are no guarantees in life. If you were in such a situation and didn’t participate in such a trial, you’d have a 100% chance of not benefiting from the new treatment (unless, of course, you’re able to survive until the end of the trial in any event and then able to use the newly-approved therapy). But not all new treatments are of any benefit, either, and you often can’t participate in more than one trial at a time (depending, of course, on what’s being tested).