NanomedicineCenter.com

Bortezomib as therapy for transplant patients

Scientists at the University of Cincinnati have found a new therapy for transplant patients — by targeting the antibody-producing plasma cells that can cause organ rejection.

They have actually discovered that a cancer drug called bortezomib (which is used for treating multiple myeloma) is very effective in treating rejection episodes caused by antibodies that target transplanted kidneys and reversing rejection episodes that did not respond to standard therapies.
“We found a body of literature demonstrating that bortezomib works well in suppressing transplant rejection in the laboratory,” said Steve Woodle, MD, the leader of the research team and chief of transplant surgery at UC. “Moreover, it worked well in models of autoimmune diseases.”

The research team from UC has been working on this issue since 2005. “It has become clear that plasma cells and the antibodies they produce play a bigger role in rejection than previously thought, and the development of therapies targeting these cells has lagged,” he says. “We realized that current therapies don’t target the plasma cells which may produce the antibody, in general.”

Scientists administered this drug to six kidney transplant recipients with treatment-resistant organ rejection, evaluating and recording their responses to the treatment.
In each case, treatment with the drug provided prompt rejection reversal, prolonged reductions in antibody levels and improved organ function with suppression of recurrent rejection for at least five months.

The research will be published in the journal Transplantation.

Source: uc.edu

Brain tumor treatment in sight

Brain tumor is an intracranial tumor which represents a mass or growth of abnormal cells in a brain. There are several types of brain cancer, some of them being benign, some malignant. There are two main groups of types of brain cancer — primary and secondary. Primary are the ones that start in the brain, and secondary are the ones that start in other parts of the body and then spread onto the brain.

Researchers from UC Davis Cancer Center have announced today that they have found a molecule which targets glioblastoma, a very deady type of brain cancer, which is the most aggresive primary brain tumor.

“These brain tumors are currently treated with surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible followed by radiation to kill cancer cells left behind and systemic chemotherapy to prevent spread to nearby tissues,” said Kit Lam, one of the researchers. “It is unfortunate that this approach does not extend survival significantly. Most patients survive less than one year.”

Lam, along with other colleagues, searched for a molecule that could be injected in patient’s body, and that would go directly to the tumor cells carrying the necessary drug. In their research, they have found that the molecule called LXY1 actually binds with high specificity to a particular cell-surface protein called alpha-3 integrin, which is overexpressed on cancer cells.
To test this, scientists implanted human glioblastoma cells into the brains of mice. After that, they injected a radiolabeled version of LXY1 and, using near-infrared fluorescence imaging, showed that the molecule did preferentially bind to human glioblastoma cells.
“This outcome gives us great hope that we will be able to deliver targeted therapies to treat glioblastoma,” said Lam.

The research was funded by National Institutes of Health. The research will be published in European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging in January 2009.

Source: ucdavis.edu

Nanoparticles kill skin and breast cancer

Skin and breast cancer are cancer types which are very spread all around the world, and many end up in the worst possible way. However, scienstists from Pennsylvania announced that they managed to turn nanoparticles into anticancer agents, and they turned out being successful. They have shown that the drug kills human skin cancer — melanoma and breast cancer cells that are grown in a laboratory culture.

This discovery will help in developing new types of drugs, which will definitely be more effective than the currently used chemotherapy.

Another research has shown that nanoparticles can be very good delivery agents too. However, since they are toxic, their exit out of the body is a problem. That’s why their use in drug delivery in humans is still on hold.
However, researchers announced that a potential solution with development of calcium phosphate nanocomposite particles (CPNPs). The particles are soluble and with ceramide encapsulated with the calcium phosphate, effectively make ceramide soluble. With ceramide encapsulated inside, the CPNPs killed 95 percent of human melanoma cells and was “highly effective” against human breast cancer cells that are normally resistant to anticancer drugs, the scientists said.

Source: dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl802098g / acs.org