Rod-shaped nanodrugs home in on tumour cells

It is claimed the findings from bioengineering researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara could have a game-changing impact on the effectiveness of anti-cancer therapies and reducing the side effects of chemotherapy. Results of their study were published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

‘Conventional anti-cancer drugs accumulate in the liver, lungs and spleen instead of the cancer cell site due to inefficient interactions with the cancer cell membrane,’ said Samir Mitragotri , professor of chemical engineering and Director of the Center for BioEngineering at UCSB. ‘We have found our strategy greatly enhances the specificity of anti-cancer drugs to cancer cells.’

To engineer these high-specificity drugs, they formed rod-shaped nanoparticles from a chemotherapeutic drug, camptothecin, and coated them with an antibody called trastuzumab that is selective for certain types of cancer cells, including breast cancer.

The antibody-coated camptothecin nanorods were reportedly 10,000-fold more effective than tratsuzumab alone and 10-fold more effective than camptothecin alone at inhibiting breast cancer cell growth.