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The microscopic anti-cancer 'smart bomb'

Scientists have developed an anti-cancer "smart bomb" that can burrow into a tumour and detonate while leaving healthy cells unscathed.

The drug-packed "nanocell" proved effective and safe against two distinct types of cancer in mice, it has been revealed.

It mounts a two-pronged attack against cancer cells, by both cutting off their blood supply and destroying them with a toxic chemical agent.

The approach can be compared with dropping a bomb on the enemy while at the same time cutting off its supply lines, say scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Tumour cells generate their own network of blood vessels to provide them with nutrients and oxygen through a process called angiogenesis.

Many researchers are exploring the idea of preventing angiogenesis to starve tumours to death.

But cutting off oxygen from cancer cells can prompt them to create new blood vessels and begin spreading.

An obvious solution is to combine anti-angiogenesis with chemotherapy, so that a tumour is destroyed before it has a chance to re-build its blood vessels.

However this kind of combination therapy faces an inherent problem. Cutting off the supply lines also removes the means by which chemotherapy drugs reach the tumour.

Professor Sasisekharan, who led the MIT research team in Cambridge, USA, said: "You can't deliver chemotherapy to tumours if you have destroyed the vessels that take it there.

"We designed the nanocell keeping these practical problems in mind."

Stealthy approach

The nanocell, which measures 200 nanometres (200 billionths of a metre) across, is described as a microscopic "balloon within a balloon".

The scientists loaded its outer membrane with an anti-angiogenic drug, and the inner balloon with chemotherapy agents.

A "stealth" surface chemistry allows the nanocells to evade the immune system, while their size ensures they aim only for the cancer target. They are small enough to pass through the walls of tumour blood vessels, which are inherently leaky, but too big for the pores of normal vessels.

Once inside the tumour, the nanocell's outer membrane disintegrates, rapidly deploying the anti-angiogenic drug.

The blood vessels feeding the cancer cells then collapse, trapping the loaded nanoparticle inside the tumour where it releases a lethal dose of chemicals.

The MIT team tested the nanoparticles on mice with skin cancer and lung cancer.

Not only did they shrink the tumours and halt angiogenesis, but there was little "collateral damage" of the kind often caused by conventional drugs which can lead to serious side effects.

The treatment had a dramatic effect on survival, the scientists reported in the journal Nature.

Mice treated with the best conventional therapy survived 30 days, while untreated mice died at day 20. But those given the nanocell therapy were still alive after 65 days.

Dr Judah Folkman, from the Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, said: "It's an elegant technique for attacking the two compartments of a tumour, its vascular system and the cancer cells."

The nanocell worked better against skin cancer than lung cancer, indicating a need to tweak the design for different diseases.

"It's not going to stop here. We want to build on this concept," said Prof Sasisekharan.

An accompanying article in Nature cautioned that a lot more research was needed before nanocell therapy could be tested on human patients.

"The effect of the sequential delivery of these two drugs on tumour growth is dramatic, but we cannot assume a quick translation of these results to therapy for humans," it said.

"The biological differences between mice and humans prevent direct comparisons between the systems, and it will also be important to extend these studies to longer time periods."