The death rate from cancer has been reduced by more than 30% over the past 30 years. It's difficult to treat Pancreatic Cancer. One in nine people survive five years after being diagnosed with this cancer because it is protected by biological factors that help it resist treatment.
UCLA researchers have developed a technology that can deliver a combination therapy to tumors using small particles of irinotecan and 3M-052, a drug that can boost the immune system.
The research team found that the simultaneously delivered combination was better than the sum of its parts in a mouse model of the disease.
"In my opinion, using the immune system will make a big difference in providing a better treatment outcome for the disease," said the author, a professor of medicine and director of research at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. That's where I hope this research is going.
The researchers found that the double- loaded nanocarrier was more effective at shrinking tumors and preventing cancer in mice than either irinotecan alone or with a single carrier. The therapy attracted more immune cells to tumors and kept drug levels in the blood longer. There was no evidence of harm.
In addition to blocking cancer cells from growing, irinotecan sends a danger signal to the immune system, which in turn mobilizes killer T cells, which travel to tumor sites and destroy cancer cells Dendritic cells are often functionally impaired in patients with Pancreatic Cancer, so 3M-052 provides extra assistance to help them better marshal killer T cells.
It has been difficult to package drugs in the same carrier. The Food and Drug Administration approved one dual- delivery nanocarrier. Over the past seven years, the Nel lab has developed an approach for simultaneous delivery that is more effective than if they were delivered separately.
There are spaces in which drugs can be packaged in most nanoparticles. The hollow interior of the core glass bubble can be filled with irinotecan using the new device. The 3M-052 molecule's fatty tail could be used to integrate the second drug into the outer layers of the body.
The structural design of the carrier, which is so small that it would take 1,000 of them to span the width of a human hair, helps prevent drug leakage and toxicity while the device enters a formidable ropelike barrier protecting the pancreatic cancer. The carrier can deliver more irinotecan to the tumor site if they use the glass bubbles.
The team will conduct further experiments to test their treatment and quality control for large-scale manufacturing.
It typically takes 10 to 20 years for new breakthrough technologies to reach the marketplace. They have been around for two decades. The silica-based carrier decorated with lipid layers has a good chance of speeding up the rate of discovery.
More information: Lijia Luo et al, Nanocarrier Co-formulation for Delivery of a TLR7 Agonist plus an Immunogenic Cell Death Stimulus Triggers Effective Pancreatic Cancer Chemo-immunotherapy, ACS Nano (2022). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.2c06300 Journal information: ACS Nano
All Rights Reserved © 2024
