Tiny pieces of gold 'boost brain cancer therapy' in lab

Minuscule pieces of gold may help improve treatment for aggressive brain cancers, according to research published in the journal Nanoscale.
Scientists engineered extremely small golden spheres, coating them with a chemotherapy drug.
When the tiny particles were infused into the centre of tumour cells, the cancer stopped replicating and many diseased cells died.
Researchers hope it may provide a way to target difficult-to-treat cancers.
'Golden core'
Glioblastoma multiforme is a common form of brain cancer that affects more than 4,000 adults in the UK each year.
Though treatments exist, they have limited effectiveness. Most people with these tumours die within five years of diagnosis.
Researchers created nanospheres - particles that were four million times smaller than a cross-section of a single human hair.
At their core were tiny pieces of gold, surrounded by layers of cisplatin - a commonly used chemotherapy drug.
In trials on samples from human cancers, the spheres appeared to boost the effectiveness of conventional radiotherapy and chemotherapy, improving the chances that all the tumour cells were killed.
Scientists tested the nanospheres on brain-tumour samples extracted during surgery.
The cancer cells were then given a dose of radiotherapy, mirroring currently available treatment.
The radiotherapy not only attacked the tumour cells, it also excited electrons within the golden core. The excited electrons triggered the breakdown of genetic material (DNA) within the cancer.
This process also led to the release of the surrounding chemotherapy, allowing the cisplatin to work on the now weakened tumour.
'Challenging tumours'
Twenty days later, there appeared to be no viable cancer cells left in treated samples.
Prof Sir Mark Welland, of St John's College, Cambridge, who worked on the techniques said: "This is a double-whammy effect.
"And by combining this strategy with cancer cell-targeting materials, we should be able to develop therapy for glioblastoma and other challenging cancers in the future."
Dr Colin Watts, a neurosurgeon involved in the study said: "We need to be able to hit cancer cells directly with more than one treatment at the same time.
"This is important because some cancers are more resistant to one type of treatment than another."
They said this was promising but early research that required many more tests before it could be considered a part of standard treatment.
Researchers hope to start trials in humans in 2016 and are working on early experiments involving other types of tumour.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fussy eaters: the favoured food of Salmonella

Image
As antibiotic resistance increases the search for new anti-bacterial treatments becomes more and more important. One way to design anti-bacterials is to find specific biochemical pathways that the bacteria require to survive, and develop drugs that block off these pathways. Some pathways are better targets than others and for  Salmonella bacteria it was thought that pathways dealing with nutrient metabolises would be a lost cause. Salmonella lives in the intestine, which hosts a whole variety of different nutrients, so surely preventing the bacteria from using a specific one wouldn’t cause them much undue distress. It’s been found, however, that as they grow and spread in the inflamed intestine the bacteria are heavily reliant on one particular nutrient: fructose-asparagine. The chemical structure of fructose-asparagine, image from the reference. The importance of fructose-asparagine metabolism was originally discovered during experiments desig
Read more

Timing is key for bacteria surviving antibiotics

For bacteria facing a dose of antibiotics, timing might be the key to evading destruction. In a series of experiments, Princeton researchers found that cells that repaired DNA damaged by antibiotics before resuming growth had a much better chance of surviving treatment. When antibiotics hit a population of bacteria, often a small fraction of "persister" cells survive to pose a threat of recurrent infection. Unlike bacteria with genetic resistance to antibiotics, evidence suggests that persisters stay alive in part by stalling cellular processes targeted by the drugs. In a new study, Princeton researchers examined a class of antibiotics that target bacterial DNA. In bacterial populations, some cells repair damaged DNA before resuming growth, and others resume growth before making repairs. The researchers found that those that make repairs before resuming growth generally are the ones that survive as persisters. The research advances a long-term goal to make
Read more

Nanoparticles derived from tea leaves destroy lung cancer cells: Quantum dots have great potential

Nanoparticles derived from tea leaves inhibit the growth of lung cancer cells, destroying up to 80% of them, new research by a joint Swansea University and Indian team has shown. The team made the discovery while they were testing out a new method of producing a type of nanoparticle called quantum dots. These are tiny particles which measure less than 10 nanometres. A human hair is 40,000 nanometres thick. Although nanoparticles are already used in healthcare, quantum dots have only recently attracted researchers' attention. Already they are showing promise for use in different applications, from computers and solar cells to tumour imaging and treating cancer. Quantum dots can be made chemically, but this is complicated and expensive and has toxic side effects. The Swansea-led research team were therefore exploring a non-toxic plant-based alternative method of producing the dots, using tea leaf extract. Tea leaves contain a wide variety of compounds, including
Read more