You’re going to see many stories of drug delivery methods using nanotechnology. Some methods are still quite theoretical; others have already reached the testing stage in animals. Note, however, that so far none have been given the green light for human testing, which says something about the nascent status of the nano-medical field. Much of the research is targeted for cancer, which is no surprise.

Duke University researchers have demonstrated in animal models that a new nanoformulation can eliminate tumors after a single treatment. After delivering the drug to the tumor, the delivery vehicle breaks down into harmless byproducts, markedly decreasing the toxicity for the recipient.
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“When used to deliver anti-cancer medications in our models, the new formulation has a four-fold higher maximum tolerated dose than the same drug by itself, and it induced nearly complete tumor regression after one injection,” says Ashutosh Chilkoti, Theo Pilkington Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering. “The free drug had only a modest effect in shrinking tumors or in prolonging animal survival”.

As often happens with this kind of research, it is the method of creating the drug or delivery mechanism that provides the most interesting news:

The delivery system makes use of the bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli) which has been genetically altered to produce a specific artificial polypeptide known as a chimeric polypeptide. Since E. coli are commonly used to produce proteins, it makes for a simple and reliable production plant for these specific polypeptides with high yield.

When attached to one of these chimeric polypeptides, the drug takes on characteristics that the drug alone does not possess. Most drugs do not dissolve in water, which limits their ability to be taken in by cells. But being attached to a nanoparticle makes the drug soluble.

“When these two elements are combined in a container, they spontaneously self-assemble into a water-soluble nanoparticle,” Chilkoti says. “They also self-assemble consistently and reliably in a size of 50 nanometers or so that makes them ideal for cancer therapy. Since many chemotherapeutic drugs are insoluble, we believe that this new approach could work for them as well.”

[Source: Futurity]