Nanoparticles based drug delivery method improves effectiveness of chemo drug

June 27 : Using nano-sized molecules to carry the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin to tumours improves the effectiveness of the drug, a new study by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing has found.

The boffins used a new drug carrier that uses nano-sized molecules to deliver the drug doxorubicin to the tumours in a mouse model, and found that the drug delivered by nanocarriers was more effective in preventing tumour growth than free doxorubicin in mice that were given the drug in such a way.

The research, led by Ning Tang, also found that mice receiving this treatment method lived longer and had fewer toxic side effects.

“Encapsulation of doxorubicin…increased its accumulation and penetration in tumors in terms of both the percentage of cells that were reached by the drug and the intracellular levels that were attained,” the authors write.

In an accompanying editorial, Matthew Dreher, Ph.D., of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and Ashutosh Chilkoti, Ph.D., of Duke University in Durham, N.C., discuss the future of drug delivery, and state that the researchers has shown a simple but effective method.

“The study by Tang [and colleagues] is a simple but effective demonstration of the benefits of integration of a drug with an appropriate carrier to yield a striking gain in efficacy,” they state.

In the past, similar drug carriers have improved targeted delivery of the drugs and reduced toxicity, but they sometimes decreased the drugs’ ability to kill the tumor cells.

The study is published online June 26 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. (ANI)