A group of European universities are banding together to create potentially valuable nanotechnology that could help pharmaceutical companies better target their anti-cancer drugs against tumours. The aim is to reduce the need to use wide-ranging chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which can cause patients to suffer from so many side-effects they sometimes wished their tumours had been left alone.
It has long been the aim of pharmaceutical companies and cancer researchers to devise means of targeting therapies so it is the tumour that gets harmed while the patient feels OK. Now, a new four-year European Union research project is trying to use nanotechnology - which is at the cutting edge of so many scientific developments today - in creating a smart medicine that can really clobber cancer tumours, without collateral damage.
This EUR11 million (US$14.5 million) NANOTHER project, coordinated by the GAIKER-IK4 Technological Centre, in Spain's Basque country, is creating medicines designed to hunt and destroy tumours using two types of nanoparticles:
* First, 'polymeric' particles, which are able to direct therapeutic compounds to tumours in parts of the body where cancer is most deadly (such as bones, the colon and breasts), which include antibodies capable of recognising and attacking tumour cells;
* Second, 'magnetic' particles also designed to help find tumours that can aid their elimination by increasing their temperature at the same time.
Universities involved in this groundbreaking research include the Interuniversity Consortium for Materials Science and Technology in Italy; the School of Chemistry and Physics and the Víctor Segalen University of Bordeaux in France; the Technology Education Institute of Athens in Greece and the University of Tel-Aviv in Israel , along with the European Union's Joint Research Centre.
A GAIKER statement said this procedure enabled the use of less concentrated doses of anti-tumour drugs: "The use of nanomedicine in the treatment of cancer is focused on the reduction of the overall dosage of the pharmaceutical drugs used, enabling the administration of higher quantities, but in a more specific manner by targeting the tumourous cells, thus reducing the side-effects [compared with] using current chemotherapeutic and radio-therapeutic methods."
Another advantage of using nanoparticles to deliver medicines is that because of their small size, they have a much greater ratio of surface area compared with their mass than with standard sized particles. That means they can deliver more medicine to attack a tumour.
The project is being funded by the EU's ongoing seventh framework programme on research. Companies involved in the project include Spain's Dominion Pharmakine and Pharmamar, Britain's NuovoProbe, and others. As coordinator, GAIKER will be responsible for coordinated research work, as well as meeting targets and deadlines.
keith.nuthall@uw-news.com
Printable version
Email to a friend
Comment on this article
Disclaimer: All reader responses posted on this site are those of the reader ONLY and NOT those of University World News or Higher Education Web Publishing, their associated trademarks, websites and services. University World News or Higher Education Web Publishing does not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with any comments, opinions or statements or other content provided by readers.
