Nanotechnology as a drug delivery in Cancer Treatment

Nanotechnology as a drug delivery in Cancer Treatment

What is Cancer ?

Cancer is a leading cause of death and remains a difficult disease to treat. It was estimated that there would be 18.1 million new cancer cases and 9.6 million cancer-related deaths by 2018 (Global cancer statistics 2018). Besides, cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell proliferation that spreads to other parts of the organs to cause death. Moreover, cancers can be either benign (noncancerous) or malignant (cancerous). Benign means tend to grow slowly and do not spread to other organs meanwhile malignant can grow rapidly, invade and destroy nearby healthy tissues, and spread to whole parts of the body. Therefore, current technology as nanotechnology are being used to treat cancer.

How Does Nanotechnology as a Drug Delivery?

A nanotechnology is a great tool in the fight against cancer. It is safer and more precise. This application has led to several promising results in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Not only that, it includes drug delivery, gene therapy, detection and diagnosis, drug carriage, biomarker mapping, targeted therapy, and molecular imaging.

The nanotechnology cancer treatments work to destroy cancer tumors with minimal damage to healthy tissue and organs, as well as the detection and elimination of cancer cells before they form tumors.

However, nanotechnology diagnoses and treats disease at a very tiny scale. Frankly, the particles are 100 to 10,000 times smaller than human cells. Because of their small size, they can locate and kill cancer more precisely than current cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy. However, many drugs are insoluble, so it difficult to administer. These compounds can be “solubilize” by combining them with organic or lipid nanoparticles, which keep them in circulation for longer periods, or by forming them into crystalline Nano suspensions stabilized by surfactants.

Nanotechnology treatments, for instance, the development of nanoscale drug delivery, can ensure precise cancerous tissue targeting with low side effects. Thus, it can easily cross the cell barrier due to its biological nature.

The tiny size of nanoparticles allows them to deliver medicines into which areas of the part of the human body that be hard to reach. For instance, the blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier prevents foreign substances from entering into the brain and also prevents some medications from being absorbed. As a result of their small size, nanoparticles can pass through this barrier, making them a useful treatment for brain cancer.

Nanotechnology Tools Used in Cancer Diagnosis

Nanotechnology can validate cancer imaging at the tissue, cell, and molecular levels, according to current research. Its use in the development of nanomaterials, which include the following:

Near Infrared (NIR) Quantum Dots
Nanoshells
Colloidal Gold Nanoparticles

Is Nanotechnology Now in Use?

Nanotechnology has been used for more than a decade by doctors to treat cancer. For instance, abraxane and doxil, aid in the efficacy of chemotherapy drugs.

Abraxane is a nanoparticle made of the protein albumin and the chemotherapy drug docetaxel. It inhibits the division of cancer cells. Furthermore, this medication to treat breast cancer and pancreatic cancer that already spread to other parts of the body and non-small-cell lung cancer.

Doxil known as doxorubicin will wrap in a liposome, which is a fatty sac. It disrupts cancer genes, preventing cancer cells from dividing. This drug use to treat cancers of the ovary, multiple myeloma, and Kaposi’s sarcoma.

Does Nanotechnology for Cancer Have Side Effects?

Nanotechnology more precisely targets cancer cells while sparing healthy tissues. However, nanotechnology drugs may have fewer side effects than chemotherapy and radiation therapy. In the case of nanotechnology-based treatments, abraxane and doxil do cause side effects which are weight loss, nausea, and diarrhea.

References:

Nanotechnology, cancer, cancerous, cancer cells, drug delivery, treatment, death, cell proliferation, organs, benign, malignant, healthy tissues, body, safer, precise, diagnosis, tumors, cancer cells, tiny scale, human cells, kill, inhibits, chemotherapy, insoluble, solubilized, lipid nanoparticle, crystalline nano suspensions, stabilized, surfactants, nanoscale, cell barrier, blood-brain barrier, biological nature, medicines, drugs, foreign substances, Nanoshells, (NIR) Quantum Dots, Colloidal Gold Nanoparticles, chemotherapy, genes, side effects.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Raihan Ridzuan

Raihan Ridzuan, Bachelor of Science (Hons) Pharmacology, is Customer Relationship Executive of Mayflax, one of the nation’s leading healthcare and marketing company

August 24, 2020July 19, 2021

No adverse CV outcomes and excess risks of death from Febuxostat

Source from MIMS.com

According to the results of a meta-analysis, the use of febuxostat does not appear to come with an increased hazard of mortality or adverse cardiovascular (CV) outcomes, for the treatment of patients with gout and hyperuricemia.

Data from 15 randomized controlled trials were collected by researchers and contributed to a total of 16,070 participants. The proportion of patients with hypertension varied between 27.7 percent and 100.0 percent, while those with diabetes ranged from 6.9 percent to 100.0 percent.

A median follow-up of 6.4 months were used across the trials, and the use of febuxostat vs control (allopurinol or placebo) did not result in a significant increase in the risk of CV mortality and all-cause mortality.

The same was true for adverse CV outcomes, as follows: major adverse CV events (risk difference [RD] 1.40 percent), myocardial infarction (RD, -0.06 percent), stroke (RD, 0.10 percent), or new-onset hypertension (RD, 1.58 percent).

Among patients with existing CV disease, the findings were consistent and the test (Egger’s regression test) did not detect significant publication bias.

The evidence were limited by the presence of low to moderate certainty, the researchers said. Recommendations of evaluating CV events and mortality as an outcome were stated by the researchers, as well as defining major adverse CV events, and comparing the outcomes among different doses of febuxostat over a longer follow-up duration in future trials.

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August 14, 2020July 19, 2021

TB antibiotics in reaching targets

Source from Sciencedaily.com

Researchers have built up another technique that empowers them to envision how well antibiotics against tuberculosis (TB) reach at their pathogenic targets inside human hosts. The discoveries, published in the journal Science, boost understanding of how antibiotics work and could help direct the development of new antibiotics, which are truly necessary in the fight against drug-resistance.

TB treatment

TB stays as one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, with over a million TB-related deaths worldwide every year.

At the point when an individual is infected with Mtb (mycobacteria), their immune system attempts to clear the microorganism by calling upon specialised immune cells called as macrophages that perceive and engulf Mtb. However, the bacteria frequently discover ways to survive and duplicate, causing illness. Patients require at least four antibiotics for at six months to defeat the disease.

It was previously unknown whether antibiotics enter all the compartments of the macrophage where the Mtb hide and duplicate.

The method pioneered in this study, which consolidates three kinds of imaging (correlated light, electron and nano-scale ion microscopy), permits researchers to picture the circulation of TB drugs in Mtb-infected human macrophages at high resolution, for the first time.

A test-case TB drug

Utilizing bedaquiline as an test-case, the group contaminated human macrophages with Mtb, and following up after two days, they treated them with the medication. Their imaging results revealed that bedaquiline accumulated in various compartments of the cell, most eminently, inside lipid droplets.

The bacteria can interact with and consume these lipid droplets. Be that as it may, the group (Crick-led team) didn’t know whether bedaquiline would be moved to the bacteria, or whether the lipid droplets were retaining the antibiotic and keeping it from arriving at the bacteria. Including a chemical that kept lipid droplets from forming significantly decreased the measure of bedaquiline in Mtb, proposing that the lipid drops are responsible for moving antibiotic to the bacteria.

“Now that we can see exactly where antibiotics go once they enter macrophages, we can build up a much clearer picture of how they reach their targets, and harness these observations to design more effective treatments in the future, not only for TB but for other infectious diseases too” says Max Gutierrez, Crick group leader and senior author of the paper.

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August 13, 2020July 19, 2021

Bleeding and cardiovascular risks heightens after consumption of NSAIDs

Source from MIMS.com

Researchers conducted a study that investigated the risk for cardiovascular and bleeding events according to groups of antithrombotic medications and subtypes of NSAIDs. The first diagnosed MI in the nationwide cohort study was retrieved from 108,232 patients that they have accessed the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service database between 2009 and 2013.

Based on their prescribed antithrombotic medications, the patients were divided into groups with the thromboembolic cardiovascular and clinically relevant bleeding events as the study outcomes.

Concomitant NSAID treatment significantly elevated the risk for cardiovascular events and bleeding events compared with no NSAID treatment over a mean follow-up of 2.3 years. Celecoxib and meloxicam showed the lowest risk of cardiovascular and bleeding events among NSAID subtypes.

The authors stated in their research that although NSAID treatment should be avoided after MI, celecoxib and meloxicam could be considered as alternative options in cases in which NSAID use is unavoidable.

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August 13, 2020July 19, 2021

Vaccines : Proven to be safe after a two decade study

Source from MIMS.com

There have been many doubts from naysayers who criticize the usage of vaccines as they claimed it could make their child get autistic and how it would make them get infected with the disease they are trying to prevent instead.

A recent US study that was conducted for over a 20-year period recently revealed that they have debunked the myths and shown that vaccines are relatively safe via existing postmarketing surveillance programmes, stated the authors.

The vaccines that were approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – the initial and subsequent labels – between 1 January 1996 and 31 December 2015 were included in the retrospective cohort study.

Out of the fifty-seven FDA-approved vaccines that were analysed, fifty-three (93 percent) initially had approval that were supported by randomized controlled trials, with a median cohort size of 4,161 participants.

There were similarities in the initial approval trial characteristics in vaccines with and without postmarketing, safety-related label modifications. The most common safety issue prompting label modifications was the expansion of population restrictions, followed by allergies with postmarketing surveillance as the most common source of safety data.

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Tag: drugs