Wendy Woodward, a radiation oncologist at the University of Texas M. Anderson Cancer Center who participated in the research. Cancer stem cells, only discovered in the s, are the subject of much debate. Some researchers think they cause cancer to recur in patients who respond favorably to standard therapy. The combination of radiation and nanoshells heated with a near-infrared laser already is being tested in patients with head and neck cancers in trials in Houston and Dallas.
The trial wasn't designed to check the effect on cancer stem cells, but Woodward said it's possible the technique is working at that level, too. She said that a trial measuring the effect in human patients could be started in as soon as six months.
The technique, known as hyperthermia, can only currently be used on superficial cancers such as head and neck cancers and inflammatory breast cancer because the technology can't reach that deep into the body yet. The mouse study, which appears in the journal Science Translational Medicine, was triggered by the serendipitous discovery of a Baylor College of Medicine graduate student working with radiation and cancer stem cells.
Returning to her lab one Monday, she was disappointed to find the cancer stem cells dead and the normal cells fine. Jennifer West to commercialize the therapy. Stroh says he expects Nanospectra to be the second company to get approval for tumor ablation using nanoparticles.
In , Berlin, Germany-based MagForce Nanotechnologies was the first company worldwide to receive European regulatory approval for its procedure using nanoparticles , small bits of iron oxide suspended in a liquid. European approval for the Nanospectra therapy is expected later this year, he says. The nanoshells are tiny layers of glass formed into a sphere encased in a thin layer of gold.
Each is about 20 times smaller than a red blood cell. Professor Naomi Halas created the tiny gold-covered glass globes called nanoshells. Image: Rice University. Collaborating with West, the Isabel C. Cameron Professor of Bioengineering at Rice, Halas worked with the nanoshells so that they would absorb light. Then they injected nanoshells into mice with cancer and found that the nanoparticles accumulated around the tumor.
When they next pointed a laser at the particles, and the light was converted into energy and heated the cancer cells. Those cells died, eliminating the tumor and leaving no damage to surrounding cells. The technology was licensed to Nanospectra Biosciences, Inc. The particle used by Nanospectra, which it has named Auroshell, is the silica core surrounded by a thin layer of gold.
Gold nanoparticles are also more biocompatible than other types of optically active nanoparticles, such as quantum dots. Gold is a chemically inert material that is well-known for its biocompatibility, which is why it has found use in a variety of medical applications in the past.
Of course, any new technology requires extensive safety assessment before coming to market, but initial results from nanoshells testing are promising. Nanoshells developed for therapeutic applications have already been evaluated by Nanospectra Biosciences Inc. The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization, chartered by the U.
Congress, with an interdisciplinary membership of more than , chemists and chemical engineers. It publishes numerous scientific journals and databases, convenes major research conferences and provides educational, science policy and career programs in chemistry.
Its main offices are in Washington, D.
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