Nanoparticles Home in on Brain Cancer

Researchers at the University of Michigan announced the testing of a drug delivery system that involves drug-toting nanoparticles and a guiding peptide to target cancerous cells in the brain. Their study finds that via this method more of the drug can be delivered to a tumor's general vicinity
To test the delivery method, researchers divided 34 rats into different groups and all received injections of cancerous cells into their brains. Those that received no treatment or got only the laser fared poorly, dying on average within 8.5 days. Those that got Photofrin either intravenously or encapsulated in nanoparticles had a median survival time of 13 days. The group that got F3 with the Photofrin-carrying nanoparticles came through the best: they lived for, on average, 33 days. By using iron oxide as a contrast agent the group determined that twice as much drug with the F3 peptide attached reached the tumor site compared with when nontargeted nanoparticles were injected.

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