Scientist at the Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa has developed a new diagnostic technology that helps tailor cancer treatment to the individual patient, before the treatment begins.
The findings of the study, led by Assistant Professor Avi Schroeder of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and the school’s Integrated Cancer Center, were published this past week in the journal, Nature Communications.
Assisted by doctoral student Zvi Ya’ari and other researchers, Prof. Schroeder and the team packed tiny amounts of anti-cancer medications inside dedicated nanoparticles which they developed.
The uniquely-designed nano-scale anti-cancer packages are able to travel through a person’s veins straight to a malignant tumor and then be swallowed by a tumor. Synthetic DNA sequences which are attached to anti-cancer drugs serve as “barcode readers” for the activity of each drug within the cancer cell.
After 48 hours, a biopsy of the tumor is extracted, and the “barcode analysis” then provides accurate information about which cells were, and were not, destroyed by each drug.
The study was based on experiments in mice affected with triple negative breast cancer. The researchers also used placebo packages that did not contain anti-cancer drugs as well. The researchers found that biopsies with anti-cancer drugs contained mostly dead cancer cells — the anti-cancer nanopackages had killed them — and the placebo nanopackages in the biopsies were found in live tumor cells. A comparison was also carried out between the various anti-cancer medications to determine the effectiveness of each.
“This technology provides a new window into fundamental insights about the mechanisms of cancer and resistance to various drugs,” Prof. Schroeder told the American Technion Society, “but my thoughts are also practical: how our research could help people.
“I am thrilled by the current success. It will take a lot more work to turn our development into a product that is available to the public, but I believe we’ll see it at the clinic within a few years.”
