University research hits breast cancer smart therapy

Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council informed Mehr News that the method had been highly effective in vivo targeting of cancer cells in female rats.

Breast cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers and cause of death of affected women. Despite different treatment methods to fight the cancer, no single method had proved effective in killing cancer cells in the mammary gland, since all of these treatments had not been specific to cancer and are methods which have harmful impact on tissues surrounding the malign tumors, thus killing healthy cells.

Mojtaba Salavati, who is a co-researcher in the study told reporters that they carried out the study to ultimately develop a new nanodrug to curb the growth and treat cancer cells through smart thermotherapy; “the method uses media which raise the temperature significantly in the tumor, bringing about death of the malign tumor,” he added.

“We hypothesized that the nanodrug rules out the difficulties inherent in other methods of treatment; the nanodrug is consists of a peptide and gold nanorods; it is highly stable in the plasma and is not cytotoxic. It also strongly specifically binds to cancer cells,” Salavati detailed. “Examination of the delivery of nanodrug in female rats reveals effective targeting off the tumor; in rats receiving the nanodrug, tumor significantly shrank in size,” he told reporters.   

“In the structure of nanodrug, Bombesin functioned as delivery molecule media which binds to gold nanorod through nicotinic acid; after in-vitro studies, the compound was injected to rats with mammary tumor; through near-infrared spectroscopy, we measured the drug’s effectiveness in thermotherapy,” Salavati said, “gold nanorods is a strong absorbent of the light and heat, which makes it good candidate for being used as heat-concentrating media. It converts infrared rays to heat, bringing out a micro-scale explosion and death of tumor cells,” he detailed.

Salavati also said that the drug would be applied in human tumor after laboratory and quality check processes; “low costs and side-effects are potential advantages of the thermotherapy,” he concluded.

SH