Side Effects And Drug Resistance Associated With Chemotherapy Tackled By Nanotechnology

Huixin He, associate professor of nanoscale chemistry at Rutgers University, Newark, and Tamara Minko, professor at the Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, have developed a nanotechnology approach that could potentially eliminate the problems of side effects and drug resistance in the treatment of cancer. Under traditional chemotherapy, cancer cells, like bacteria, can develop resistance to drug therapy, leading to a relapse of the disease.

As reported in the December 21, 2009, issue of the journal Small, He, Minko and their co-researchers, including investigators from Merck & Co. and Carl Zeiss SMT, a global nanotechnology firm, have designed nanomaterials that allow for the delivery of both a chemical (doxorubicin) to destroy cancer cells and a genetic drug to prevent drug resistance.

When administered to drug-resistant ovarian cancer cells, the treatment was more than 130 times lethal than when doxorubicin was administrated alone. “The drug can only be released when it is inside the cancer cells,” He said. “This controlled internal release mechanism can dramatically eliminate side effects associated with anticancer drugs to normal tissues.”

Battling Aggressive Breast Cancer with Nanotubes

In related research, Professor He and another team of co-researchers have developed single-walled carbon nanotubes that hold the potential of providing a more effective means for detecting and selectively destroying aggressive breast cancer cells. Read more

Two Combination Treatment Regimens Added To Updated NCCN Guidelines For Ovarian Cancer

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) recently updated the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines for Oncology™ for Ovarian Cancer to reflect the addition of two preferred combination regimens for a specific cohort of patients based on data from recent clinical research studies.

Key updates to the NCCN Guidelines include the addition of carboplatin (Paraplatin®, Bristol-Myers Squibb)/weekly paclitaxel (Taxol®, Bristol-Myers Squibb) and carboplatin/liposomal doxorubicin (Doxil®, Centocor Ortho Biotech) for cytotoxic therapy for patients with platinum-sensitive epithelial ovarian cancer, fallopian tube cancer, or primary peritoneal cancer that has recurred.

These modifications made to the NCCN Guidelines for Ovarian Cancer are based on results from recent studies in The Lancet and The Journal of Clinical Oncology demonstrating that both combination regimens improved median progression-free survival in women with specific types of recurring ovarian cancer as compared to conventional regimens. In addition, the carboplatin/weekly paclitaxel regimen improved overall survival.

“Ovarian cancer is a challenge to treat because by the time the majority of the women are diagnosed with the disease, it has already progressed to stage III or IV,” says Robert J. Morgan, MD, of City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center and the chair of the NCCN Guidelines Panel for Ovarian Cancer. “Although finding effective screening tools remains a priority, new treatment options for women with ovarian cancer such as the ones outlined in the updated NCCN Guidelines, remains imperative to making steady progress against the disease.” Read more

Gene Variant That Increases Ovarian Cancer Risk Discovered

By searching millions of DNA variations in the genomes of thousands of women with and without ovarian cancer, scientists have discovered a previously undetected region of DNA which when altered, can increase a woman’s risk of developing ovarian cancer by 40 per cent. The hope is that this will one day lead to a reliable screening test for a disease that currently has a high mortality rate because it is difficult to detect early.

The study was conducted by an international research team that included UK scientists from University College London (UCL), the Cancer Research UK Genetic Epidemiology Unit, and the University of Cambridge, and is published in the 2 August online issue of Nature Genetics.

Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer in women in the UK, where around 6,800 new cases are diagnosed every year, which is a rate of about 130 women a week finding out they have the disease.

However, ovarian cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in women in the UK, where it kills around 4,300 women every year.

The human genome, the DNA-coded blueprint of how to make a human being, has more than 10 million genetic variants, of which just a small number will increase a woman’s chance of getting ovarian cancer. Read more

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