Use of carbon nanoparticles paves way to customized cancer therapy

Source: www.azonano.com Author: Cameron Chai A research study by Jeffrey Myers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and James Tour from the Rice University has reported that a combination of carbon nanoparticles and existing drugs has the capability to improve head-and-neck cancer treatment, particularly when coupled with radiation therapy.   The novel technique encapsulates chemotherapeutic drugs using carbon nanoparticles, which sequester the drugs until their delivery into the targeted cancer cells, opening the door to develop customized therapies based on the requirements of individual patients. The researchers have developed a simple technique to mix Cetuximab, a targeting agent, and paclitaxel, a hydrophobic active chemotherapy agent marketed as Taxol, with hydrophilic carbon clusters that are functionalized with polyethylene glycol or PEG-HCC. According to the researchers, Cetuximab, paclitaxel and PEG-HCC ingredients combine easily and form a water-soluble compound that targets tumors more effectively than Taxol, while eliminating the toxic effects of Cremophor EL and paclitaxel on neighboring healthy cells. Cremophor EL is a carrier based on castor oil that makes the hydrophobic paclitaxel into a water-soluble compound and delivers it to patients intravenously. Tour commented that the novel technique utilizes a very small quantity of chemotherapy drug. Myers informed that tests involving the use of Cetuximab, paclitaxel and PEG-HCC ingredients and radiation therapy on mice demonstrated a substantial increase in destroying tumors. The researchers’ hypothesis is paclitaxel detects the tumor cells to the radiation effects and Cetuximab and PEG-HCC augment the delivery of paclitaxel into the cancer cells, Myers [...]

2012-02-19T10:42:23-07:00February, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Vibrating Gel May Give New Voice to Throat-Cancer Patients

Source: Businessweek.com Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Bob Langer may be the last, best hope for aging rockers. Just ask Roger Daltrey, lead singer for The Who. Langer, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher whose work has created two dozen biotech startups, is developing a gel that can vibrate up to 200 times a second -- replicating the action of human vocal cords -- to rejuvenate the damaged voices of singers such as Daltrey and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, both of whom have contributed funding for the project, along with actress Julie Andrews. More than 13,000 people diagnosed each year in the U.S. with throat tumors may end up being helped by the effort of the singers, the scientist and the surgeon who brought them together, Harvard University’s Steven Zeitels. Langer and Zeitels plan to test the gel next year in a cancer patient. “Unless you’ve been touched personally, it’s difficult to see, but there are millions of people who have no voice whatsoever,” said Daltrey, who was operated on for precancerous lesions in his throat two years ago, and couldn’t speak at all for two weeks. The gel will be injected into the vocal cords. Once there, it behaves the same way as the uninjured membrane, responding to breath and muscles tension by vibrating as if it was the real thing, Zeitels said. The research has been funded by the nonprofit patient organization, The Institute of Laryngology and Voice Restoration, where Andrews is an honorary chairwoman. ‘Sound of Music’ The research, [...]

2011-11-01T11:23:12-07:00November, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

MIT and Harvard team gives voice to the voiceless

Source: Popular Science Author: Clay Dillow Call it a silent killer: some 6 percent of the U.S. population has some kind of voice disorder, most of those resulting from scarring of the vocal cords that can lead to diminishing or even total loss of the ability to speak. Giving voice to the voiceless, a team of Harvard and MIT researchers have developed a synthetic, injectable material that can be implanted into scarred vocal cords to restore their function. Rather than approaching the problem as a physiological one, they looked at the vocal cords as a mechanical issue. That is, they didn’t attack the scar tissue in the vocal cords but devised a fix for it. That fix came in the form of a material known as polyethylene glycol (PEG), which they chose because it is already FDA approved for other medical applications. PEG is flexible, both literally an in terms of its manipulability. By playing with the molecular structure of PEG, the researchers were able to dial in on a variation that mimicked the viscoelasticity of human vocal cords. Known as PEG30, it moves very, very similarly to natural vocal tissues (you can see this in the video below). Further, it can restore vibration to vocal cords that have stiffened due to scarring--which is the ultimate goal here. Their PEG30 gel, should it receive its own FDA approval, would be categorized as an injectable medical device rather than a drug, which could further speed it to market. If [...]

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