• 1/4/2006
  • Bethesda, MD
  • Vicki Brower
  • Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 98, No. 1, 9-11, January 4, 2006

In October, the National Cancer Institute made its first nanotechnology research awards worth $33.3 million to 12 research groups and seven hubs. A month later, at the Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics meeting in Philadelphia, a press conference devoted exclusively to nanotechnology highlighted several experimental studies using nanoparticles, including a liposome–nanoparticle gene therapy designed to home in on and kill cancer cells wherever they are throughout the body. Nanotechnology’s potential application to cancer seems to be in the news almost weekly, with new uses of the technology for diagnosis and treatment moving rapidly from the lab toward clinical trials. But along with several promising discoveries have come unanswered questions about nanotechnology’s safety for human health and the environment.

Since the discovery of carbon nanotubes and their unusual properties in 1991, the hope for and hype of nanotechnology’s potential to better diagnose and treat cancer have blossomed. In September 2004, the NCI initiated a comprehensive 5-year, $144.3 million research effort, the Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, to develop and translate cancer-related nanotechnology research into clinical practice. Its first awards were $7 million to the Cancer Nanotechnology Platform Partnerships and $26.3 million to seven Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence, and they span a wide range of technologies and cancer types. Projects funded include developing applications to treat multidrug-resistant tumors, early cancer detection using nanoprobes targeted to angiogenic signatures, DNA-linked dendrimer nanoparticles for diagnosis and treatment, near-infrared fluorescence nanoparticles for optical imaging, and hybrid nanotechnology particles for imaging and treatment of prostate cancer.

Nanotechnology deals with structures that range from 1 to 100 nm—about the size of a virus—and derives its name from the Greek word for “dwarf.” (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, or about 25 millionths of an inch). “Nanotechnology allows us to make materials that are thousands of times smaller than the smallest cell in the body,” said James R. Baker Jr., M.D., professor of biologic nanotechnology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “Because these materials are so small, they can easily get inside cells and change how they work.”

Baker is developing nanosized dendrimers, molecules with treelike branches that can be attached to drugs. Such nanosized “Trojan horses” are designed to smuggle anticancer drugs into cells and are expected to increase the drug’s killing capacity and reduce toxic side effects, Baker said. There are about 700 products now on the market that use nanotechnology, from sunscreens to electronics to the first cancer drug, Abraxane (albumin-bound nanosized particles of paclitaxel), which was approved last January in the United States for second-line treatment of metastatic breast cancer.