nanoparticles

A case for radiation enhancement in head and neck cancer

Source: www.medscape.com Author: M. Alexander Otto, PA, MMS Two new exploratory studies of radioenhancers used in combination with radiation therapy in the treatment of head and neck cancers showed that these agents can boost the effectiveness of radiotherapy in these cancers. The two phase 2 studies, presented at the 2024 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Head and Neck Cancer Symposium on March 1, 2024, found an increase in 1-year local control rate, progression-free survival, and overall survival. In one study, which explored the use of the hedgehog pathway inhibitor vismodegib alongside radiation therapy, researchers found that all but one patient with locally advanced, unresectable basal cell carcinoma (BCC) demonstrated 1-year local control — a significantly better rate than that expected from radiation alone — and 83% were alive at 5 years. The second, which explored the use of hafnium oxide nanoparticles (NBTXR3) prior to radiation therapy, also reported promising results. Patients with T3/4 locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma of the oropharynx or oral cavity who were ineligible for chemoradiation demonstrated a median overall survival of 18.1 months vs 12 months, the life expectancy with radiation alone. Although small, both studies suggest a role for radioenhancers in head and neck cancer, Jonathan Schoenfeld, MD, a head and neck cancer radiation oncologist at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, in Boston, Massachusetts, told Medscape Medical News.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2024-03-08T10:05:03-07:00March, 2024|Oral Cancer News|

Tiny cancer tracers could boost survival rates

Source: www.bignewsnetwork.com/ Author: PanArmenian.Net staff Nanoparticles that can detect complex cancer cells and potentially improve five-year survival rates are headed for human trials. South Australian company Ferronova has developed the nanoparticles that are designed to identify early stage tumor and related cancer cells, Medical Xpress says. Ferronova Chief Executive Stewart Bartlett said the tiny cancer tracers were expected to be trialled on oral cancer patients at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in April 2020, pending key approvals. Bartlett said once Ferronova's polymer-coated iron oxide nanoparticles were injected into patients they would show up on an MRI within about 15 minutes. 'The way they work in cancer is they're designed to be detected around a solid tumor' he said. 'They'll actually be picked up by your lymphatic system as a foreign body and follow the same pathway as any cancer spread from a primary tumor would follow. 'If you can actually know where those particles are going you can also determine where the cancer would have gone.' Ferronova was spun out of a nanoparticles research collaboration between the University of South Australia and New Zealand's Victoria University, with backing from IP investors Powerhouse Ventures and UniSA Ventures. Bartlett said preclinical trials at the Mawson Lakes lab had given the company confidence to use the particles on humans. He said the treatment was expected to be 90 percent accurate. 'We've added a molecule to the particles so they go to the first lymph node and they are retained in the first lymph node, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2019-11-03T10:29:59-07:00November, 2019|Oral Cancer News|

Plasmonic nanobubbles can detect and kill only cancer cells

Source: www.azonano.com Author: staff The first preclinical study of a new Rice University-developed anti-cancer technology found that a novel combination of existing clinical treatments can instantaneously detect and kill only cancer cells — often by blowing them apart — without harming surrounding normal organs. The research, which is available online this week Nature Medicine, reports that Rice’s “quadrapeutics” technology was 17 times more efficient than conventional chemoradiation therapy against aggressive, drug-resistant head and neck tumors. The work was conducted by researchers from Rice, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Northeastern University. “We address aggressive cancers that cannot be efficiently and safely treated today,” said Rice scientist Dmitri Lapotko, the study’s lead investigator. “Surgeons often cannot fully remove tumors that are intertwined with important organs. Chemotherapy and radiation are commonly used to treat the residual portions of these tumors, but some tumors become resistant to chemoradiation. Quadrapeutics steps up when standard treatments fail. At the same time, quadrapeutics complements current approaches instead of replacing them.” Lapotko said quadrapeutics differs from other developmental cancer treatments in that it radically amplifies the intracellular effect of drugs and radiation only in cancer cells. The quadrapeutic effects are achieved by mechanical events — tiny, remotely triggered nano-explosions called “plasmonic nanobubbles.” Plasmonic nanobubbles are non-stationary vapors that expand and burst inside cancer cells in nanoseconds in response to a short, low-energy laser pulse. Plasmonic nanobubbles act as a “mechanical drug” against cancer cells that cannot be surgically removed and are otherwise resistant to [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-06-03T06:07:14-07:00June, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Electrochemical sensor spots oral cancer

Source: cen.acs.org Author: Erika Gebel Medical Diagnostics: A simple and inexpensive device detects multiple cancer biomarkers When doctors spot cancerous lesions in patients’ mouths, it’s often too late: The disease has already reached a difficult-to-treat stage. As a result, oral cancer has a high death rate. To help doctors catch the disease earlier, researchers have developed a simple, low-cost method to identify multiple oral cancer biomarkers at once (Anal. Chem., DOI: 10.1021/ac301392g). Scientists previously have shown that oral cancer patients have altered levels of several proteins, including vascular endothelial growth factor C (VEGF-C), in their blood (J. Clin. Pathol., DOI: 10.1136/jcp.2007.047662). Doctors would like to use these biomarkers to diagnose the disease. But James Rusling of the University of Connecticut, Storrs, says that to improve diagnostic accuracy, it’s necessary to detect multiple proteins at once. What’s more, current technology can’t easily measure subtle changes in the low concentrations of these proteins found in patients’ blood. Such tests would require trained technicians and expensive equipment, such as spectrometers, that most clinics don’t have. Rusling and his colleagues, including J. Silvio Gutkind of the National Institutes of Health, wanted to develop a low-cost test doctors could easily use. The team built a device that can measure concentrations of multiple biomarker proteins at once through easy-to-read electrical signals. For each protein they want to detect, the scientists use two antibodies that each bind to a different part of the biomarker. One antibody decorates magnetic microbeads. The team also coats these microbeads [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2012-06-22T21:11:32-07:00June, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Emergence of nanobiotechnology

Source: www.thedailystar.net Author: Md. Riajul Hossain Think of the tiny robots swimming through your blood vessels all over your body and fighting your enemies. Fascinating! Isn't it? The picture you are having in your mind right at this moment could be possible only because of the blessings of nanotechnology. When you apply genetic engineering in microorganisms, say bacteria, to attain your goal of curing various types of problems that living organisms might have, can be termed as nanobiotechnology. To define nanotechnology, it is stated that nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications. Nanoparticles are actually much too small to see with your eyes, or even with a typical light microscope. At the nanoscale, materials can behave in different and unexpected ways. For example, gold is yellow in color, but at the microscale of 25 nm size, they appear red. The target of the researchers in this field is to harness these different and unexpected behaviors of the nanoparticles to make new technologies, namely nanotechnology. Today, we will see how nanotechnology can involve biotechnology and what nanobiotechnology has to offer for us. You need not necessarily engineer microbes for nanobiotechnology every time. Even small nanoparticles could be used to deliver drugs in human bodies, to clear environmental pollutants etc. all of which could be taken under the umbrella of nanobiotechnology. This technology is being heralded as the key to new cancer treatments, energy independence, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2012-04-09T18:41:44-07:00April, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Nanoparticles kill head/neck cancer cells in mice

Source: www.drbicuspid.com Author: DrBicuspid Staff Using nanoparticles and alternating magnetic fields, University of Georgia scientists have found that head and neck cancerous tumor cells in mice can be killed in half an hour without harming healthy cells. The findings, published in Theranostics, mark the first time to the researchers' knowledge that this cancer type has been treated using magnetic iron oxide nanoparticle-induced hyperthermia in laboratory mice. The researchers successfully used small concentrations of nanoparticles to kill the cancer cells, noted Qun Zhao, lead author and assistant professor of physics, in a press release. They found that the treatment easily destroyed the cells of cancerous tumors that were composed entirely of epithelium (Theranostics, 2012, Vol. 2:1, pp. 113-121). Other research groups are exploring the use of heated nanoparticles as a potential cancer treatment, and previous studies have shown that high temperatures created by combining magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles with strong alternating magnetic currents can create enough heat to kill tumor cells. Zhao said he is optimistic about his findings, but explained that future studies will need to include larger animals before a human clinical trial could be considered. For the experiment, researchers injected 0.5 milliliter of nanoparticle solution directly into the tumor site. With the mouse relaxed under anesthesia, they placed the animal in a plastic tube wrapped with a wire coil that generated magnetic fields that alternated directions 100,000 times each second. The magnetic fields produced by the wire coil heated only the concentrated nanoparticles within the cancerous tumor and [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2012-03-30T05:34:26-07:00March, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Laser and nanoparticles blow up cancer cells

Source: news.softpedia.com/ Author: Tudor Vieru In a new approach to fighting cancer cells, or cells ridden by several other types of diseases as well, researchers managed to combine the powers of lasers and nanoparticles most efficiently. The method relies on using short bursts of laser light to produce small explosions from gold particles that have been placed inside the targeted cells beforehand. The blasts, which cause no ill-effects to surrounding cells, are highly capable of dismembering the cancerous ones, acting like a “jackhammer” on their targets, and pounding relentlessly, LiveScience reports. Basically, the active elements in this therapy are nanobubbles, which form as the gold particles are subjected to intense, but short, laser pulses. The science group, which is based at the Rice University, was able to determine that the intensity of the lasers could be tuned in two ways, resulting in two different results. The end result could be either clear, bright and small bubbles, that were harmless, or larger explosions that took place inside the cell, which dismembered it. “Single-cell targeting is one of the most touted advantages of nanomedicine, and our approach delivers on that promise with a localized effect inside an individual cell. The idea is to spot and treat unhealthy cells early, before a disease progresses to the point of making people extremely ill,” says RU physicist Dmitri Lapotko. He was also the author of a new study detailing the method, which appears online, in the January 25 issue of the respected scientific journal Nanotechnology. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-02-07T09:35:35-07:00February, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Scientists decode entire genetic code of cancer

Source: www.popsci.com Author: Jeremy Hsu And cigarette smokers get a free mutation in every pack In a major step toward understanding cancer, one of the biggest problems bedeviling modern medicine, scientists have now cracked the genetic code for two of the most common cancers. This marks just the beginning of an international effort to catalog all the genes that go wrong among the many types of human cancer, the BBC reports. Cracking the Cancer Code A cluster of breast cancer cells, with blue ones marking actively growing cells and yellow marking dying cells. Could scientists crack their code next? Too much time spent under the sun apparently leads to most of the 30,000 mutations contained within the DNA code for melanoma, or skin cancer. Outside experts told the BBC that no previous study has managed to link specific mutations to their causes. Wellcome Trust scientists also found more than 23,000 errors in the lung cancer DNA code, with most caused by cigarette smoke exposure. A typical smoker might get one new mutation, possibly harmless but also possibly a cancer trigger, for every 15 cigarettes that they smoke. The new cancer maps could lead to better blood tests for diagnosing the respective cancers, as well as better targeted drugs. Blood tests might even reveal the DNA patterns that suggest cancer lies on the horizon. The International Cancer Genome Consortium still expects to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in cracking the code of the many human cancers. The U.S. has the [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-12-17T19:52:17-07:00December, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Nanomagnet in “Star-Trek style” wand could cure cancer

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk Author: staff The space-age technology, which uses microscopic iron particles to heat up and destroy tumours, may be ready for clinical trials in as little as three years. Different teams of UK scientists have been working together on the research, which could bring new hope to patients who are no longer responding to standard therapy. In future the ''nanomagnet'' cancer treatment may even be administered in GP surgeries or out-patient clinics. Crucially, the scientists believe it will be highly cost-effective. The technique literally ''cooks'' cancer cells as if they were in a microwave oven. But instead of microwaves, a rapidly changing magnetic field is generated by the paddle-shaped ''wand''. This heats up thousands of iron oxide ''nanoparticles'' placed inside the tumours. Heating the cells by only 5-6C is enough to send them into shock and kill them. Meanwhile, surrounding healthy tissue in which the iron oxide particles are absent is left unharmed. A major part of the research has involved finding ways to target tumours with the nanoparticles. Two approaches have been explored, one using bone marrow stem cells and the other using antibodies to ferry the particles to cancer sites. A major advantage of using a biological version of ''iron filings'' in the therapy is that they can easily be tracked by a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. Doctors will be able to map exactly where the nanoparticles - and the cancer - are situated in the body. The ''wand'' can then be held over the hidden [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-10-06T20:29:12-07:00October, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Azaya licenses Health Science Center technology to treat cancer

Source: San Antonio Business Journal (www.bizjournals.com) Author: staff Azaya Therapeutics Inc. has licensed a technology that could be beneficial in treating head and neck cancers, the company said Wednesday. The technology involves the use of liposomes to deliver radiation into the head and neck tumors through a direct injection. Company officials say they may be able to shrink the tumor, delay recurrence and avoid collateral tissue damage that often accompanies other forms of radiation therapy. Liposomes are small, bubble-like particles that are made of the same material as cell membranes. They were engineered decades ago by the pharmaceutical industry. The company is planning to begin a phase I clinical trial in early 2010. Azaya is licensing the technology from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Scientists have been developing the radiation-infused liposome technology for the past six years. Azaya President and CEO Michael T. Dwyer says this is a good collaborative opportunity for the company and the university. “They have more than 15 years of expertise working with liposomes and a patent-pending method of using them to deliver radiation to a very specific tumor location,” Dwyer says. “And Azaya has a patented system for producing liposomes quickly and efficiently.” Dwyer adds that this treatment has the potential for addressing other forms of cancer as well, including prostate, breast and brain cancer. Azaya is a San Antonio-based pharmaceutical company with a novel drug delivery platform. Its proprietary Protein Stabilized Nanoparticles technology platform is designed to address the [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-09-03T18:54:06-07:00September, 2008|Oral Cancer News|