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IIT-Bombay team has devised a drug carrier that can be used in combination with chemo to deliver treatment to exact site of tumour, keeping healthy cells safe.

Bengaluru: IIT-Bombay scientists have developed a therapy whereby two microscopic “bubbles” can deliver drugs straight to tumours, thus reducing the amount of healthy cells that would be affected in chemotherapy.

The mice on which the study was carried out reportedly demonstrated a 100 per cent survival rate.

The research has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Cancer has affected humans for millennia, and, so far, chemotherapy has proved to be one of the most effective treatments.

However, cancer cells tend to multiply quickly and chemotherapy simply targets the cells that are dividing.

This means that even healthy cells that aren’t affected by cancer will be targeted by chemo drugs, which induce suicide in cells. Thus, whether the treatment is effective or not, the patient invariably tends to be in a lot of pain.

To improve the accuracy of drugs — so they target only an infected tumour and not healthy cells — as well as to reduce cancer cells developing immunity to drugs, lots of experimental work is underway around the world on ‘combination therapy’.

These include the administration of two or more drugs to treat the same disease. With cancer, this is increasingly becoming the norm.

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Ball-shaped carriers

The IIT-Bombay team has devised a drug carrier that can be used in combination with chemotherapy to deliver treatment to the exact location of a solid cancerous tumour, keeping healthy cells safe.

The study has been performed on both lab-grown cells (in-vitro), as well as animals (in-vivo), with promising results.

The injectable consists of two microscopic ball-shaped carriers attached together: The smaller one is a capsule that will contain the potent drug to fight a cancer cell, and the bigger one a gas bubble that will act as a tracker that can be seen using ultrasound imaging.

The latter is 500 nanometres in diameter, and known as a “nanobubble”, while the drug carrier is about 200 nanometres and called a “nanocapsule”.

The tiny blobs will have two different effects in the body. First, they will be able to allow tracking through ultrasound as they travel through the bloodstream.

We can monitor their progress and wait for them to reach the precise point of the cancerous tumour. When they hit the region where the affected tumour is, ultrasound therapy can be administered to the exact target area. This process is known as guided cancer therapy.

The second occurs as tissues loosen when ultrasound is applied to the right spot. As the tumour area is administered ultrasound, the tumour tissues relax. The gas bubble undergoes multiple expansions and contractions, before eventually bursting.

The tiny nanocapsule has now been given an easy passageway to enter the tumour, thanks to tissue expansion. The capsule is made up of lipids that occur naturally in our bodies, and thus they are compatible to deliver the drug within the tumour at a precise location.

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‘Improved targeting’

“This research presents an image-guided, ultrasound trigger-responsive platform for improved tumour cell targeting, along with real-time monitoring of the disease,” said Rinti Banerjee from the department of biosciences and bioengineering at IIT-Bombay, who led the study.

The two individual bubbles aren’t a new invention. Both technologies exist independently. But they have not been used in conjunction before for treating cancer.

“To the best of our knowledge this is the first time a smart combination therapy with a pro-apoptotic biomolecule, a drug, and nanobubbles have been used together,” said Banerjee.

The study showed that ultrasound with the combination of the two bubbles is much more effective than any other combination of treatments and components.

Ultrasound image-guided therapy and ultrasound application therapy are growing fields in cancer research, and this study could help expedite more efficient treatments based on this technology.

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