New nanoparticle delivers and monitors cancer drugs

Chemical engineers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have synthesised an iron oxide nanoparticle (IONP) that delivers cancer drugs to cells while simultaneously monitoring the drug release in real time. Their results have been published in the journal ACS Nano.

Until now, there had been limited studies describing how to load chemotherapy drugs onto the surface of IONPs, and no studies that have effectively proven that these drugs can be delivered inside the cell. Associate Professor Cyrille Boyer and his team have engineered a new way of loading the drugs onto the nanoparticle’s polymer surface.

They explained that they synthesised the IONPs “with excellent colloidal stability in both water and serum, imparted by carefully designed grafted polymer shells. The polymer shells were built with attached aldehyde functionality to enable the reversible attachment of doxorubicin (DOX) via imine bonds, providing a controlled release mechanism for DOX in acidic environments.”

The intracellular release of DOX was demonstrated for the first time with the use of a technique called fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) to monitor the drug release inside a line of lung cancer cells. Associate Professor Boyer said this is “significant as it allows us to determine the kinetic movement of drug release in a true biological environment”, as opposed to in a model experiment on a lab bench.

By understanding how the cancer drug is released and its effect on the cells and surrounding tissue, doctors can adjust doses for each patient to achieve the best result. The next step in the research, said Associate Professor Boyer, is to move to in vivo applications.

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