Graphene used to deliver anticancer drugs

The development, made by researchers at North Carolina State University (NC State), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and China Pharmaceutical University (CPU), reportedly sees each drug targeting the distinct part of the cell where it will be most effective.

According to NC State, the technique was found to perform better than either drug in isolation when tested in a mouse model targeting a human lung cancer tumour.

The researchers also found that an anticancer protein, TRAIL, can serve as an active targeting molecule to bind directly to the surface of cancer cells, which had not been demonstrated previously.

In this study, the researchers attached two drugs - TRAIL and doxorubicin (Dox) - onto graphene strips. Graphene is a two-dimensional sheet of carbon that is only one atom thick. Because TRAIL is most effective when delivered to the external membrane of a cancer cell, while Dox is most effective when delivered to the nucleus, the researchers wanted to deliver the drugs sequentially, with each drug hitting a cancer cell where it will do the most damage.