Researchers in Syracuse University’s chemistry department have engineered a new drug-delivery system expected to enhance the effectiveness of cancer-killing drugs. 

The system utilizes gold nanoparticles, or engineered particles in the nanometer size-range, with attached DNA segments designed to strongly latch on to doxorubicin, or DOX, a leading anticancer drug, said James Dabrowiak, lead author of the research and professor of chemistry at SU.

Dabrowiak and his team have been studying this phenomenon for about a year and a half, he said. The first publication of the research appeared in the February issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Chemical Communications. The team’s research is ongoing.

‘While nothing quite like our system is being investigated, the potential of nanoparticles is being widely explored for new applications in medicine,’ Dabrowiak said. 

Dabrowiak — along with the help of Mathew Maye, an assistant chemistry professor at SU, and Colleen Alexander, a graduate student at SU — discovered a single nanoparticle has the power to bind to more than 100 DOX molecules without permanently retaining the drug. This means the drug molecule can still be released in the body so it may express its killing effect on cancer cells, Dabrowiak said.

Maye said he believes the work can bring significant gains for treating chemotherapy, according to a March 16 PR Newswire article. There is still more work that needs to be done, but the research so far has opened an area of investigation that can lead to new clinical tools, Maye said in the article.

Maye could not be reached by The Daily Orange for comment.

Dabrowiak said evidence has shown nanoparticles are not particularly harmful to cells and are able to enter the cell interior. This allows the nanoparticles to guide toxic DOX molecules through cell walls and into the cell. The DOX drug is already accepted by the FDA, according to the PR Newswire article.

‘The device is a way to deliver a high payload of toxic drug to the interior of the cell,’ he said.

Through equipping the DNA segments on the particles with a specific molecule aimed at targeting, for example, breast cancer cells, the drug attacks cancer-stricken cells with greater specificity and force. Then it treats the cancer-stricken cells with just DOX in traditional methods of chemotherapy. 

DOX is currently used against breast, bone marrow, thyroid, bladder, ovary and small cell lung cancers, in addition to several other types of cancer, according to the PR Newswire article.

This feature of the system could reduce the negative side effects patients often experience with chemotherapy by allowing clinics to focus treatment more specifically on cancer cells and minimizing the damaging effect chemotherapy has on normal, healthy cells in other areas of the body, Dabrowiak said.

Dabrowiak said the team is currently working on developing this system to work with other clinically approved drugs.

‘Besides designing different gold nanoparticles for delivering other clinically approved drugs, we are initiating cell studies with our delivery device,’ he said.

The Syracuse laboratory is continuing investigations to check how toxic the system is, according to the PR Newswire article. The team will also explore particles capable of attaching to cancer cells and responding to triggers to activate the drug release, according to the article. Prior discoveries demonstrate that such nanodelivery systems may be within reach and could help deliver large payloads of antitumor drugs where needed, according to the article.

‘We are fully aware that the road from the laboratory to the marketplace is marked with many pitfalls,’ Dabrowiak said. ‘But we are optimistic that our discovery will ultimately make its way to clinical trials and hopefully become a new and more effective way to treat cancer.’

vdnapoli@syr.edu

Published on March 29, 2011 at 12:00 pm