Nano-scale drug delivery for chemotherapy

[Kerry]

http://www.labnews.co.uk/laboratory_article.php/5059/2/nano-scale-drug-delivery-for-chemotherapy-drugs

 

Bioengineers used Escherichia coli which had been genetically altered to produce a specific artificial polypeptide known as a chimeric polypeptide. When attached to the chimeric polypeptide, the chemotherapy drug – in this case doxorubicin which is commonly used to treat cancers of the blood, breast ovaries and other organs – dissolves in water consistently and reliably in a size of 50 nanometers, which makes them ideal for cancer therapy. Once the drug has been delivered, the vehicle breaks down into harmless by-products, reducing toxicity to the recipient.

[iNow]

Rubbish. Nano-scale pharmacology is nothing more than re-branded homeopathy.

 

 

EDIT: Mea culpa. I was mistaken, and am glad this was nothing more than a false positive. My apologies to the OP.

Edited December 17, 2009 by iNow

[CharonY]

Huh? Nanoparticles or dispersion into nano-sized particles have been under investigation as vehicles of direct drug delivery for quite a while now.

How does that connect to homeopathy?

Edited December 17, 2009 by CharonY

[iNow]

Hmmm... Okay... Perhaps not in this case, but as an FYI... Homeopathy proponents have taken to use of the term "nano-pharmacology." Perhaps I was a bit over vigilant and didn't read closely enough the OP.

[CharonY]

Nope that is something entirely different. The OP was talking about nano-sized actual drugs. Also I am pretty sure that homeopaths would not use words like "polypeptide" or use nano as a measure of size.

[Kerry]

Yes, basically the drugs are attached to nano-sized vehicles, in this case a polypeptide. Because it's so small (50nm) it can easily pass into the tumour and accumulate, which incidentally means you can shrink the tumour with fewer treatments.

 

They've tested it on mice and it seems to work well:

 

mice treated with doxorubicin alone had an average tumour size 25 times greater than those treated with the new formulation, and survived for 27 days, compared to 66 days for mice receiving the new treatment.