Attaching tiny diamond chips, just slivers of carbon really, to nanoparticles helps to shrink lung tumor cells in animal models, according to recent research by Ho et. al. in the latest Science Translational Medicine. Scientists created small nanoparticles with attached diamond specks and the chemotherapeutic agent, doxorubicin (dox) and injected them into mice with lung cancer. These nanoparticles zoomed in on their target, the cancerous tumor, without causing any auxiliary toxicity that is seen when dox is just injected directly into mice. Therefore, higher doses of dox could be given without having liver toxicity or other side effects.
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2 comments:
Interesting delivery technique chemotherapeutic drugs. I was curious if diamond-coated nanoparticles have greater tumor specificity than gold-coated nanoparticles that are used in photothermal ablation of tumors?
Interesting question. Unfortunately the paper in Science Translational Medicine was comparing diamond-nanoparticle conjugated dox with administration of dox alone. In this case, they were able to give higher doses of dox when conjugated to the nanoparticle and had lower toxicity than dox alone. It isn't clear how they were targeting the tumors. This is important to avoid deposition of nanoparticles in many organs, not just the tumors. Hopefully, more will be coming out soon.
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