Multifunctional Nanomaterials in Nanomedicine

After a long gap I am writing another post in my blog.  In this post I wish to write about the work I am doing. The viewers should know what the "Nanotechnologist" is upto. Luckily, I have published two research papers this year and I wish to discuss them. I discuss now my first paper in this post and the discussion about the second paper follows this post.

As from my profile, everyone knows that I am doing Ph.D in SASTRA University, Thanjavur, one of the finest institutions for nanotechnology research. I am working on theranostic multifunctional nanomaterials for cancer treatment. In my first paper, I synthesized the multifunctional nanomaterial and tested against cancer cells, retinoblastoma. The paper was published in Journal of Biomaterial science, polymer edition. Due to the journal copy right issues, i can't attach the hard copy of the paper to this post, i am including the reference of the paper at the bottom of this post.

Combating cancer with a single weapon, say chemotherapy, is not sufficient. Physicians suggesting combination therapies such as chemotherapy with radiation treatment. So combination treatments are giving results. The drawback is that giving high doses of chemo and radiation to patient leads to several side effects, like losing hair is the common scene observed in case of radiation treated patients. To improve the patients quality of life with minimal side effects or none, new technologies have to be tested and used.

One such technology is the utilization of nanomaterials in medicine to treat diseases like cancer. Nanomaterials are those confined to the size of nanometer (10-9m). In case of nanomedicine the horizons with respect to length differ slightly. Many nanomaterials tested for medical applications vary from 10 nm to 400 nm approx. The nanomaterials which are usually the delivering vehicles called as carriers (nanocarriers) deliver drug to the target cells. The end goal is that these materials should be used for imaging, and treating of cancer at the same time. The concept of multifunctionality should be imposed into the nanocarrier. 

Multifunctional Nanomaterial

The manuscript entitled "Engineered multifunctional nanomaterials for multimodal imaging of retinoblastoma cells in vitro" studied the imaging of cancer cells using MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging)  and fluorescence. This property helps in tracking the cancer cells non invasively. SPIONs (superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles) with high magnetization and good senstitivity in MRI were synthesized. The nanoparticle surface was modified with oleic acid and again coated with bovine serum albumin and decorated with sulforhodamine B, fluorescent dye. This material showed no toxicity towards healthy cells. The MRI and fluorescence imaging abilites were studied.

The multifunctional nanomaterials are highly useful in imaging the cancer cells in vivo which helps in better diagnosis and progressively better treatment of cancer.

Reference: Leela Raghava Jaidev, Dhiraj Vasanth Bhavsar, Uma Sharma, Naranamanglam R. Jagannathan, Uma Maheswari Krishnan & Swaminathan Sethuraman (2014) Engineered multifunctional nanomaterials for multimodal imaging of retinoblastoma cells in vitro, Journal of Biomaterials Science, Polymer Edition, 25:11, 1093-1109.

Nanomotors - Cancer Killers

The vision of the Eric Drexler in his famous book “Engines of creation” discusses the possible ways of developing the nanorobots or nanobots that enter the cells and manipulate the process inside and treat dreadful diseases like cancer. From the last two decades researchers around the world are trying in different ways to make that vision into a reality. Looking for the possible invention with the novel materials under synthesis, the researchers from at PennState university, USA has showed a considerable progress. They synthesized nanobots made of Gold-ruthenium bimetal nanorods. The functionality of the nanorods is their spinning behaviour in the presence of ultrasonic fields. This makes the rods behave as the small tiny nanomotors.

"This research is a vivid demonstration that it may be possible to use synthetic nanomotors to study cell biology in new ways. We might be able to use nanomotors to treat cancer and other diseases by mechanically manipulating cells from the inside. Nanomotors could perform intracellular surgery and deliver drugs non-invasively to living tissues." 

- Evan Pugh, Professor of Material Chemistry and Physics, PennState.

The researchers studied the nanomotors working in HeLa cells. They gave the nanomotors into the medium given to the HeLa cells. The cells uptake the nanomotors. The nanomotors work very little when a lower ultrasonic frequency waves were given the actual working of these nanomotors was observed at higher ultrasonic frequencies. A series of videos demonstrating the uptake of the nanomotors and the cells in action in the link given below.

http://phys.org/news/2014-02-nanomotors-cells-video.html#jCp

The research in combating cancer exploring different unique ways where the conventional therapies are not enough. It is the vision of any science-fiction lover to have nanorobots killing cancer cells one by one. I think we are at the age where the technology is highly advancing where with the help of nanotechnology we can actual make the science-fiction things possible and real. We hope the answer for the cancer treatment is not so far.

Courtesy:http://www.phys.org.

Nanochains for the treatment of Cancer Micrometastasis

Cancer is the well known diseased state around the world with millions of people suffering from it. For researchers it is a heap of task to combat this disease. From several decades several treatment methods are in practice. Among them, surgery and chemotherapy are the highly recommending treatment methods. Physicians remove the tumor through surgery and then suggest the high dosage of tumor suppressing drugs also called chemotherapy. These methods can be followed when the tumor size is around 100 mm³, provided the tumor is benign and not metastatic.

What is with the metastatic tumor? The cancer cells detach from the solid benign tumors migrate to different organs in the body and grow into tumors. This state is called metastatic state. The cancer at this stage is highly resistant to treatment. It is difficult to remove the numerous tiny tumors by surgery because the size of these metastatic tumors is very less. Normally more lethal cancer like pancreatic cancer will be in metastatic stage by the time the physician detect the presence of cancer. Thus the treatment is very difficult and the chances of survival also very very less. Thus the mortality rate increases.

Researchers are trying different methods and novel materials to treat this kind of metastatic cancer. With the availability of the high end technology like nanotechnology, where the nano (10^-9m) sized materials are synthesized and exploited for different applications, there is scope to find some novel ways of treatment. A recent paper in Journal of controlled release during the january issue showed the new kind of nanomaterials called as nanochains are employed to treat the cancer state. The nanoparticles were loaded with drug and linked to the other nanoparticle by a covalent linkage. The authors found that these materials are highly penetrable to the deep locations of the tumor and releasing the drug will kill the cancer cells. Novel materials like these are crucial to combat diseases like cancer.

Reference: Journal of controlled release, vol. 173, 10 January 2014, Pages 51–58