Anticancer Drugs, Hidden in Nanoshells, Target Tumors Better Than Standard Chemotherapy

Tiny vehicles for chemotherapy boost tumor-busting skills and reduce side effects 

Cancer plays a deadly game of hide-and-seek in the body, and the drugs sent to treat it are often the losers—as is the cancer patient. The drugs have trouble distinguishing between tumor cells and healthy ones and may drop their payload on the normal cells, causing miserable side effects and leaving nearby cancer cells untouched. Malignancies may also get a helping hand from the body's own leading defense weapon, the immune system. It often mistakes anticancer drugs for harmful bacteria or other foreign invaders and breaks them down. The shattered pieces are conveyed to the body's trash receptacles in the liver, kidneys and spleen, again, before they reach their intended target. Even when the drugs do manage to arrive at a tumor, many of them become entangled in the dense undergrowth of the malignant mass—unable to penetrate it completely.

Recent advances in nanomedicine are now allowing drugs to better traverse this fraught landscape and hit tumors where they live. The key is a uniquely crafted drug vehicle, wrapped in a protective outer shell, that shuttles the chemotherapy drugs through the body. Fine-grained control over the components from which the vehicles are built, which can be just a few billionths of a meter across, has let scientists create a specialized architecture that, among other things, does not trip immune system alarms. Researchers such as Kazunori Kataoka of the University of Tokyo and his colleagues have tucked potent chemotherapy drugs inside sheaths the size of a hepatitis C virus—some 200 times as small as a red blood cell. On a molecular level, those drugs look a lot more like something the body makes. These compounds also have the advantage of being able to slip into tumors and steer clear of healthy cells.

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